I Write Sins Not Tragedies
by PurpleHipposRock
Summary: A complicated, twisted mystery starting out with the murder of the groomsman on his supposed day of bliss. But then again - nothing ever goes smoothly with the NCIS crew around. Sequel to "The Ballad Of Mona Lisa". XD
1. Chapter 1

**I Write Sins Not Tragedies**

**Sequel to "The Ballad Of Mona Lisa"**

**(You might like to read "The Ballad Of Mona Lisa" first; I might make a few references to it throughout the course of the story)**

**I don't own NCIS: LA, Panic! At The Disco or "I Write Sins Not Tragedies"**

**Chapter 1**

'_Oh, well imagine, as I'm pacing the pews of a church corridor…'_

The sun shone down on a picturesque day in Los Angeles, California. The sky was the most perfect blue ever seen, and was reflected in the sparkling ocean which was dotted with surfers. It was the most perfect day for a wedding. However…

'If you don't stop walking up and down the corridor, Ben, you'll wear a path in the carpet.'

The bride sat patiently, carefully balanced on the edge of a stool, her skirts fanned out around her, her veil hoisted up around the coronet of her golden hair. Her bouquet of white lilies lay forgotten on the edge of a hall table as she wiped frustrated tears away with a lace edged hanky.

'There already _is_ a path,' said the best man, Ben, raking a frustrated hand through his hair. 'Probably worn by hundreds of other best men,' he muttered. He stopped and pounded on the closed and locked door. 'Charlie! Come on, man!'

The bride sighed and patted away the last of her tears before called at the door, 'Listen Charlie, I'm not mad, sweetheart. You got cold feet. It happens. Darling, we don't have to do this. We can wait. We did this too soon for you. It's alright. I understand.' She sighed again and turned to Ben. 'I have regrets myself,' she murmured in an undertone. 'Are you sure that he's in there? Maybe he left, ran away.'

'Charlie isn't the type to run away, though,' the maid-of-honour, Belinda, said reflectively. 'He _is_ a Marine. He's said it himself – Marines don't run away from anything.'

'After the last time, I wouldn't blame him for going,' Harriet sighed.

'For the last time, it wasn't your fault,' Belinda said to her. 'It was all _him_.'

'And his Cousin Donald, don't forget him,' Ben said quickly. 'Oh, for God's sake… Charlie!' He pounded on the door again, but the force of his pounding led the door to shake loose of its fastenings and slowly swing open.

'Oh!' Harriet stood, surprised, and followed Ben and Belinda into the room.

'Oh, my God,' Belinda whispered before dashing out of the room, one hand holding her long skirts out of her way while the other was clapped over her mouth.

Ben knelt and looked at the man sprawled inelegantly on the floor before reaching out and tapping him on the cheek. 'Charlie. Charlie. Wake up.'

Charlie didn't respond.

'Oh, what's wrong with him, Ben?' Harriet asked, clutching her bouquet nervously.

Ben reached out and placed two fingers on Charlie's neck. He waited a full minute before saying, 'Oh, Harriet.'

'No, no! Don't say it,' Harriet cried, tearing up. 'No! He can't be!'

Ben sighed. 'Call the police. Charlie's dead.'

…

Deeks practically _bounced_ into the bullpen, a wide smile gracing his face. His blue eyes sparkled as he placed Styrofoam coffee cups onto desks before bouncing into his seat and beaming at the rest of the team, who was looking at him like he'd suddenly gone crazy.

'Hi, guys,' he beamed at them.

'Who are you and what have you done with my habitually late, lazy partner who never does _anything_ for us?' Kensi demanded, crossing her arms and squinting at the stranger that appeared to have possessed Deeks' body.

'I'm in a good mood,' Deeks said to her, still grinning, before slurping his coffee.

'Why are you in a good mood?' Callen asked, sniffing suspiciously at the coffee that the bad Deeks impersonator had placed on his desk.

'My little sister's getting married,' Deeks beamed at them. 'I just found out this morning.'

'Congratulations. You never mentioned that you had a little sister,' Kensi said.

'You never asked.'

'I'm asking now. You have a little sister?'

'Yes, I do. Ellie's my little sister by two and a half years.'

'Wow. When's she getting married?'

'Early next year.' Deeks was smiling so brightly that it was like looking into the sun, and Kensi_ just_ managed to stop herself from squinting.

'Hang on, I thought that you had no next of kin,' Callen pointed out. 'So when exactly did this sister of yours come into the picture?'

'Oh, she lives in Australia. It's not exactly helpful for her to be named as my next as kin. When I got shot, she didn't actually find out until a week after, which was when Hetty finally found her.'

'You didn't know where your own sister was?' Sam asked sceptically.

'Well, _I_ thought that she was in Dubai, but apparently she'd moved while I was undercover in the MMA gym, where we met when she did it and I missed her call.'

Suddenly, in the middle of Callen and Sam's interrogation of Deeks, Eric appeared on the balcony holding a six-foot, bright orange and green vuvuzela, and blew it with all the air in his lungs.

'Jesus!' Kensi yelped, jumping a foot in the air. 'You're lucky I wasn't holding my coffee just then, Eric!' she called. 'Or I'd be coming after you with my SIG.'

'Sorry, Kens,' Eric called down in apology. 'I didn't mean to surprise you.'

'Hey, what happened to my Kensi Blye, always on alert and ready for anything?' Deeks asked teasingly.

'She's too tired to be alert,' Kensi grumbled.

'We've got a case,' Eric said cheerfully.

'Of course we do,' Kensi continued to grumble as she walked out of the bullpen.

Deeks blinked and joined his partner on her climb up the spiral staircase. 'Is something wrong, Kens?'

'No. Nothing at all,' she mumbled.

'Are you sure?' he asked slowly.

'Yeah. I'm fine.'

He let out a low laugh, and before she could correct herself, he said in a low tone so that only she and he could hear, 'You only say you're fine when you're _not_ fine.'

'I'm good.'

'Too late to correct yourself now, Princess,' Deeks said quickly. 'So…'

She remained silent beside him as they entered the Ops Centre.

'This is the part of the conversation where you tell me what's wrong,' he prompted.

She sighed. 'And this is the part of the conversation where I ignore you.' And she proceeded to do just that.

'Kensi!' he said beseechingly.

'What have you done now?' Callen asked, standing beside him.

'I don't actually know. She just suddenly decided to be grumpy.'

'Stop talking about me,' Kensi snapped at the two men, and Callen simply patted Deeks sympathetically on the shoulder before turning his attention to the briefing that Eric was giving.

'This is Staff Sergeant Charlie Gould,' Eric said, nodding to Nell who pulled up his picture. 'He was supposed to be getting married to his fiancé Harriet Mason this morning, but he never got to the altar.'

'Why?' Deeks asked.

'He died.'

'Oh.'

'Who found the body?' Callen asked.

'The fiancé, the best man Ben Harrison and the maid of honour, Belinda Messina,' Nell said.

'Okay, Densi, you take the crime scene. Sam and I will interview the witnesses.'

'Don't call us Densi,' Kensi grumbled.

'Come on, Princess,' Deeks said coaxingly. 'Let's go.'

'And don't call me Princess,' she snapped at her unwitting partner before stalking off.

Callen winced. 'Good luck with that, Deeks.'

Deeks dipped his head in a nod. 'I'll need it.'

…

**Let me know what you think in a review.**

**XD PurpleHipposRock**

**P.S. Happy New Year!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**If I owned NCIS: LA, Deeks would be shirtless a lot more… and if I owned Panic! At The Disco, they'd have a lot more albums out… so it's clear that I don't.**

'_And I can't help but to hear, no I can't help but to hear an exchanging of words…'_

'Why do we never get to interview the witnesses?' Deeks asked.

'Do you remember what happened last time we interviewed a witness, Deeks?' Kensi questioned, pulling the car up behind a bevy of blue and white police cars.

Deeks scratched his head before looking at his partner, confused. 'Now that you mention it, no. What did happen?'

'You got hit in the head. Twice.'

'I did?' Deeks asked. 'That might explain why I can't remember it… and the lingering headache.'

Kensi chuckled quietly to herself. 'Not to mention you couldn't actually walk straight. Kept walking into doorframes and once, a clown.'

Deeks blinked. 'A clown?'

'He was just so very innocent, Deeks, I really can't believe that you did that,' Kensi reproached him. 'You walked right smack bang into him while he was making a balloon poodle for a small girl.' She sighed. 'You turned the poodle into a giraffe.'

'Oops…' Deeks got out of the car, as did Kensi, before locking the car with a small "beep, beep".

'Oops indeed.'

Deeks looked up at the grandly decorated church and sighed. 'My little sister's gonna be doing this soon.' He smiled.

Kensi made a face. 'Ugh. It's a waste of money.'

'You don't believe in marriage?'

'No.'

'Divorced parents?' Deeks asked.

'No. My parents stuck to their marriage vows.'

'But you don't believe in "'til death do us part'?" Deeks questioned.

'Nope.'

'No big white wedding?'

'Waste of money.'

'Afraid of commitment?'

'Nope. I've got you, don't I?'

Deeks laughed. 'I'm not… I'm not your husband, Kensi.'

'Thank God for that,' Kensi said. 'If I didn't kill you, I'd kill myself.'

'Thanks for that,' Deeks said, pouting. 'Doesn't this mean anything to you?'

'"This"?' Kensi asked.

'Our partnership. Our "thing"?'

'There is no "thing", Deeks.'

'_You_ said that there was.'

'I was teasing you.'

'Were you, Kensi? Were you?'

'Yes.'

'That was rhetorical.'

'I know, but it still begged an answer.'

'What've you got against marriage?'

'The whole principal of the thing. We shouldn't be forced to have only one partner for the rest of our lives.'

'Thus the first date rule?'

'Probably.'

'Kensi, you'll never see the merits in marriage unless you actually try committing to something.'

'And thus my dilemma, Deeks. I'll never see the merits of commitment until I commit, but to commit I need to see the merits of commitment.'

'Talk about the chicken and the egg.'

Kensi sent him an amused glance. 'Really? You're going all philosophical on me?'

'Well, my baby sister _is_ getting married. Maybe I'm starting to feel my age.'

Kensi sighed and thought, _Lord grant me patience._ 'Feel your age? If you start to get all prehistoric on me, I'm gonna have to ask Hetty for a new partner. Hey, maybe this time I'll even get one that can handle a gun.'

'Oh, just because I'm not freakish like you-'

'Freakish? Freakish. Really?'

'Yeah, freakish. It's like you've got a supernatural ability to shoot everything you aim at. And you don't use your powers for good, like my Wonder Woman should.'

'_Your_ Wonder Woman?' Kensi asked, outraged. '_Your_ Wonder Woman. Can you please inform me _when_ you bought me?'

'Bought you? No-one can buy _you_. As if anyone would ever _want_ you.'

Kensi gaped at him, momentarily so infuriated that she couldn't actually speak. 'And what's that supposed to mean?'

'You're the commitment-phobe, you tell me!'

A quiet cough interrupted their loud argument and a timid looking probie approached them. 'Excuse me. Are you from NCIS?'

'Yes!' Kensi snapped at the same moment that Deeks said, 'No.'

The probie blinked. 'Was that a yes or a no?' she asked, tucking a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

'It's a yes,' Kensi replied.

'It's a no,' Deeks said almost immediately afterward.

'Deeks, we're from NCIS,' Kensi said to him. 'We just drove from the NCIS building in an NCIS car to an NCIS crime scene. If we're not from NCIS, I'll eat my gun.'

'I'm _not_ from NCIS,' Deeks countered. 'I'm LAPD.'

'You're police, we'll take you,' the probie said quickly.

Kensi glared at him. 'See? And also, you're the LAPD liaison. You currently belong to NCIS. Meaning that you are from NCIS.' The last sentences were said very, very slowly.

'You don't have to say that like I'm a child,' Deeks said, pouting.

'Yes I do, because you are,' Kensi replied.

'Thanks, Kens. Shall I just get back in the car and go back to LAPD? Or am I so childish that I shouldn't be allowed to drive?' Deeks was clearly quite angry now.

'Sometimes, I wonder,' Kensi answered before thoroughly ignoring him and turning to the probie. 'Agent Kensi Blye, NCIS. That guy' – jerking her thumb over her shoulder at Deeks, who was examining a gold-engraved invite – 'is Detective Marty Deeks, LAPD. He's our _liaison_,' she said pointedly, projecting her voice over in his direction.

He pointedly ignored her.

'What happened here?' Kensi asked.

'Well, Staff Sergeant Charlie Gould was _supposed_ to be getting married to his fiancé of six months, Harriet Mason. Unfortunately, when the bride turned up, the groom was nowhere to be found. This way.' The probie led them out of the main church and into the back hallway, which was suitably decorated. 'The best man, Ben Harrison, the maid-of-honour, Belinda Messina and Miss Mason found him in this room.' She nodded to the room at the end of the hall.

Kensi began to make her way to the room, but halfway down the hall realised that the probie wasn't following. 'Aren't you coming?' she asked.

'I'm sorry, ma'am, but I've got a fairly sensitive stomach and I'm not good with the dead bodies,' the probie said. 'I've got other work to do. The ME's in there.' With that, she disappeared.

'Girl looks right green,' Kensi muttered, glancing at Deeks. His face was still stoically set. 'Oh, come on. You're not still mad?'

'Generally, I'm good at the forgive and forget with you, Kens, but today…' he trailed off.

'Deeks…'

'Just… just forget it, alright?' Deeks asked, before pushing past her into the room.

'Forget what?' Rose looked up at him from her position on the floor next to the body. 'Hullo, Detective Deeks.'

'Hi Rose,' Deeks said immediately. 'It's nothing, forget it.'

'Alright-y, then, I'll forget that you said to forget it.'

Kensi sighed. 'What have you got, Rose?'

Rose's eyes narrowed at the pair. 'Something's wrong,' she said, waving a liver probe at them.

Deeks flinched at the sight of the blood. 'Ah, Rose, you mind?'

'What? Oh, sorry,' Rose said. 'Sometimes I forget that other people don't like the blood and gore. That girl that was in here a while ago, she needed to put her head between her knees. She looked like she was going to keel right over there.'

'Rose, the body?' Deeks said tersely.

'Oh, right, sorry,' she said. She paused before her eyes widened comically and she said, 'Oh, that's what's wrong! You're not fighting!'

'Generally, Rose, that's seen as a good thing in a relationship – partnership,' Deeks corrected himself almost at the same moment that Kensi did. They shared a tense glare.

'Not with you two,' Rose said, waving the probe at them again. 'Arguing is a _good_ thing with you two. Nate and I discussed it last time we talked. It shows that you two are-'

'Okay, Rose, we really don't need you to psychoanalyse our _partnership_ at the moment,' Kensi said. 'All we need is a cause and time of death.'

'Oh, sorry,' Rose apologised.

There was an awkward silent pause.

'Rose?' Kensi prompted.

'I'm sorry,' Rose said quickly again. 'I was waiting for the punch line.'

'Rose, cause of death.'

'I can't really tell,' Rose said. 'There are no signs of physical trauma. He's perfect on the outside. I mean, really perfect. Those marines keep their men-'

'Rose.' Deeks broke in this time.

'There's no blood, no gore. No sign of strangulation or drowning…' Rose paused before taking a penlight from her pocket and shining it into the dead man's eye.

'Hope to get a pupillary response?' Deeks joked.

Kensi glared at him.

'That's better!' Rose exclaimed, pointing the light at both of them. In turn, they flinched away from the light which invariably shined in their eyes.

'What's better? He didn't respond, did he?' Deeks asked, alarmed.

'No, no, you two. The whole you say something inappropriate and she glares,' Rose said.

'Rose. Dead body,' Kensi reminded her.

'Sorry,' Rose apologised again. 'There's no petechial haemorrhaging.'

'Okay, dumb that down for the cop please,' Kensi said.

'Okay, Kensi-'

'Sh!' Kensi cut him off, holding up a finger and not bothering to look at him.

'If his airways had been cut off, and no oxygen was getting to the brain, the blood vessels in the eyelids burst, making little red pinpricks on the eyelids. Staff Sergeant Gould here doesn't have them,' Rose said.

'So, no suffocation and no drowning,' Deeks said.

'No blood means no stabbing.'

'What about blunt force trauma?' Kensi asked.

'I've checked,' Rose said. 'You can't rule it out, but I've found no obvious signs of it. There's no sign of head trauma, but I haven't had a chance to exam the rest of him.'

'Your best guess, Rose?' Deeks prompted.

'There's no such thing as a best guess in this business, Detective.'

'My apologies. If you _had_, absolutely was _forced_ to come up with a cause, what would you put it tentatively as?' Deeks rephrased his question, smiling his third-best charm smile at her.

'Well, seeing as you put it that way,' Rose said, melting under his smile and frank gaze.

'You just fell for a heap of crap,' Kensi muttered, familiar with Deeks' techniques of getting women to do what he wanted.

Rose hadn't heard her, luckily for Deeks, and said cheerfully, surprisingly cheerfully for someone who spent her days around dead people, 'If forced, I would tentatively put the cause of death at poison.'

'You think he was poisoned?' Kensi asked, dropping her anger at Deeks as she exchanged a surprised glance with him. He looked at her with the same amount of surprise.

'See this foam around the mouth?' Rose pointed to the dry crust.

'How long, Rose?' Kensi asked.

'Well, I spoke to the people who found him, and they found him around half-past eleven. The groom and groomsmen arrived at half-past eight.'

'Well, that gives us a three hour window.'

'And I can narrow it down a little bit more for you,' Rose said sunnily. 'I spoke to the best man. Apparently, when they'd arrived, Mr Gould here had felt dizzy and a little shortness of breath, but they put it down to nerves and the amount of alcohol that he'd consumed.' The thermometer that she'd been using to measure the ambient temperature beeped, and she beamed before checking it. 'Give me a minute here and I might have a time of death…' She closed her eyes briefly before using her free hand to trace out the numbers in mid-air, doing the math. Her lips moved soundlessly, and Kensi exchanged a smile with Deeks before remembering that she was angry at him and dropping the smile and looking away. 'Ten forty-seven this morning,' Rose suddenly announced.

'That accurate?' Deeks asked in surprise.

'Give or take half an hour,' Rose said quickly. 'It's not specific, but that's what the maths is telling me.'

'Okay, great,' Deeks said brightly.

'I'll get that info back to the guys,' Kensi said, quickly flipping open her cell phone.

'Great. I'll go look around… for… potential suspects… and… wedding gift ideas…' Deeks trailed off.

'Oh, who's getting married?' Rose asked. But she looked up and found that she was alone.

…

**Uh oh… Deeks and Kensi aren't happy with one another… I wonder what purple plot hippo has in store for them…**

**As per usual, I do love it when you review. =)**

**XD PurpleHipposRock **


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**If I owned either, I wouldn't have to learn about quadratic equations or logarithms or polynomials because all the maths I would need would be addition, to count all of my lovely money. So it's obvious that neither band nor television show belongs to me.**

"'_What a beautiful wedding.' 'What a beautiful wedding,' says a bridesmaid to a waiter…"_

'NCIS.' Callen showed his identity badge to the man standing by the police tape.

The man nodded mutely and lifted the tape for the two men.

'Deeks sure seemed happy that his little sister was getting married,' Sam said conversationally to Callen.

'Prob'ly just means that there's one less woman that Deeks has to worry about,' Callen said airily.

'What's that supposed to mean?' Sam asked.

'The dude does not stop worrying about Kensi. I'm serious. Once, she screamed while in the showers and Deeks ran all the way through the office faster than I have ever seen that guy move before,' Callen said.

'Why'd she scream?' Sam asked.

'Mouse,' Callen said dismissively.

'Kensi was scared of a mouse. _Our_ Kensi?' Sam asked.

'Yup,' Callen said. 'Weird, huh?'

'Yeah,' Sam agreed. 'Also weird is Deeks running to her rescue, though. Why's he like that with her? Sometimes I swear he thinks that she's made of glass.'

'I think he has nightmares,' Callen said.

'Nightmares? What makes you think that?'

'Last week, both Deeks and I had paperwork owing on the Ramirez case, so we both stayed behind while you went to visit your family and Kensi went to do what Kensi does. Deeks, as he often does, fell asleep. I considered waking him, but in the end just figured that they guy needed the sleep.'

'You were wrong?' Sam asked, filling in Callen's silence.

'Oh, boy was I ever. About half past midnight, Deeks starts talking in his sleep.'

'So, naturally, you listened in.'

'Of course I did.' Callen acted as if it were natural to listen to someone mumbling in their sleep. 'You can learn a lot about people through what they say in their sleep.'

'What'd he say?' Sam leaned in slightly, interested.

'Well, I couldn't decipher most of it – his drawl, and all that,' Callen said. 'But there was one word that kept coming up, and that was "Kensi". About fifteen minutes later, he's twitching so bad that he almost falls off of his chair. So, like any good co-worker should, I woke him up. But it was only then that I realised that he was crying.'

'Crying? What happened?'

'Guy wakes up, locks eyes with me, goes "Shit, that was worse than usual", packs up and is out of there like the place is on fire.'

'You think it was about Kensi?'

'There was something else that I heard while he was sleep-talking.'

'Which was?'

'"Don't take her, take me instead."'

'Wow.'

'Uh huh,' Callen hummed in agreement.

'If those two don't get their act together soon,' Sam began, but was cut off by Kensi and Deeks storming mutely out of the church. He watched them silently go by without even acknowledging the other agents' presence.

'That was weird,' Callen said.

'Very weird. Where's the bickering? The bantering? The punching and the laughter and the smiles?' Sam asked, watching as both got into the car and drove away without a word to each other.

'Something's wrong with them,' Callen said.

'Understatement of the century, G.'

'Oh, well. We'll figure them out later.'

'Again,' Sam agreed.

They stepped into the church and almost ran into Rose, who had two cops helping her with the body on the gurney.

'Oh, hey guys.' She pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear and smiled up at them. 'I just gave your colleagues the basics. Would you like me to explain them to you too?'

'No thanks, Rose,' Callen said. 'I'm sure Densi will fill us in properly when we meet up.'

'I'm not so sure about that,' Rose said. 'I don't know if you've seen them, but they were acting mega-weird when I was talking to them.'

'How weird?' Sam asked.

'They were all sober and kinda mad at each other from what I could tell,' Rose said. 'And Deeks wasn't cracking any jokes or anything, so it was annoying because I keep pausing and waiting for him to say something completely inappropriate but actually quite funny and then for Kensi to tell him to shut up, but he never said anything, and they didn't like to look at each other which was funny because usually they're all bickering and happy and I should shut up because you've got work to do, don't you?' Rose wound down.

'Actually, that was quite insightful,' Callen managed.

'Well, Nate and I have been talking quite a lot lately,' Rose admitted.

'That's great,' Sam said. 'But you're right; we do have work to do.'

'Well, I'll call you when I've finished the autopsy. The morgue's pretty bare at the moment, just a triple heart-bypass gone wrong that I need to open up, and she's not at the top of my priorities, so I should have your Staff Sergeant finished by later this afternoon,' Rose said sunnily.

'Great,' Callen said. 'We'll see you then.'

'Can't wait for it,' Rose said, beaming at them before moving away.

'Should we be alarmed that that woman is so cheerful considering her career?' Sam asked.

'Maybe she just really likes her job,' Callen speculated.

'A lot,' Sam agreed.

The same probie that had greeted Densi walked tentatively to the men. 'Are you from NCIS?' she asked shyly, and pulled back slightly while waiting for their reply.

'Yeah, Special Agents Callen and Hanna,' Callen said, showing her his badge. 'Why are you acting so…'

'Oh, sorry. It's just that last time I asked that question, the people who I asked got into an argument, and I really try to avoid conflict.'

'You're a probie, aren't you?' Sam asked.

She tilted her head affirmative.

'Were the people you asked, by any chance, Agent Blye and Detective Deeks?' Callen asked.

She looked surprised. 'How did you know that?'

'Lucky guess.' Callen exchanged a glance with Sam.

'So, who are the people who found the body?' Sam asked.

'Oh, the bride, the maid of honour and best man. The bride was almost hysterical, so we put her, her maid and the best man in another room away from everything.'

'Good work,' Sam said. 'Which room?'

'Second on the right,' the probie said, pointing to the hallway.

The two men made their way through the throng of people and into the room where the probie had directed them.

The three people sat in the corner near an old fashioned fireplace. The bride had discarded her veil, and the flimsy gauze was spread carelessly over the floor. She was still ethereally beautiful in her ivory dress, though, her golden hair released from its coronet and splaying over her shoulders and down her back. As a result of the tears constantly streaking down her cheeks, her smeared mascara left black stripes down her face. The maid of honour sat close to her, one hand interlocked with the bride's, gently talking to her. Her dark hair was still in its braid and her pale pink dress was still perfect, unlike the bride's rumpled silk. The best man sat slightly away from the women, but he was still close enough for the agents to notice that his hand was grasping the maid of honour's.

'Excuse, are you the people who found the Staff Sergeant?' Callen asked softly.

The best man was the first to react. 'Yes.'

Callen and Sam took seats in armchairs near the bridal party.

'You being?' Callen prompted, looking at him.

'Oh, sorry. I'm Ben Harrison. Best man.' He reached out and shook the agents' hands.

'I'm Special Agent Callen and this is Special Agent Hanna,' Callen introduced them. 'We're from NCIS.'

Ben nodded. 'This is Harriet Mason,' he said, motioning to the bride. 'And Belinda Messina.' He gently squeezed the maid's hand.

'Our condolences, ma'am,' Sam said softly.

Harriet nodded, trying to wipe the tears away with an already saturated handkerchief.

Callen looked around the room and spotted a box of tissues on a table in a corner. He stood up and retrieved them before placing them on the table in front of the grieving bride.

'Thank you,' she gulped, taking some and dabbing at her eyes.

'What can you tell us about what happened?' Sam asked gently.

'Well,' Harriet began, 'He wasn't there when I walked down the aisle.' This was said with a decided quaver in her voice. 'Ben told me that he was there, but they couldn't get him to come out of the room. He'd just gone in to settle his nerves and…' But before she could continue, the tears overflowed.

'Wedding jitters,' Ben continued quietly while Belinda gently comforted her friend. 'Poor guy was an absolute wreck. Said that he felt like he was gonna throw up, and he really didn't look well either. You know what that's like?' he asked.

Callen shook his head. 'No.'

Sam nodded. 'Unfortunately, yeah.'

'Well, she walked down the aisle and he wasn't there, and neither was I,' Ben said. 'I was trying to "convince" Charlie to come out. He was probably dead by then, though. She and Bell, here, were with me when we found him.'

Callen gave them a moment before asking, 'What sort of person was Charlie?'

'Oh, he was a sweetheart,' Harriet immediately said. 'He was so easy to love. I think it was love at first sight for us. Everyone loves Charlie… _loved_ Charlie.'

Sam approached the next question cautiously. 'Did Charlie have, uh, any enemies?'

'No!' Harriet exclaimed vehemently.

'Well…' Ben interrupted her hesitantly.

'Anything you can tell us could be crucial to the investigation,' Callen said coaxingly.

'This is the second time Harriet and Charlie have tried to get married,' Belinda said.

'What happened the first time?' Sam asked.

'Well, the night before, after the rehearsal dinner, Charlie's cousin Donald pulled him aside and told him that Harriet was cheating on him and then proved it to him when a mysterious man went into Harriet's hotel room while they were watching. Turned out that the guy was just fixing the television in Harriet's room, but Charlie didn't know that, and his emotions kind of ran away with him. He confronted her on the altar before storming away before she had a chance to explain. Harriet then fainted and hit her head and was in hospital for three days,' Ben informed them.

Harriet let out a little gasp. 'He came and he told me that he realised that he loved me no matter what I did and I told him that I have never cheated on him, ever, and we decided to try again.'

'So, um, this cousin Donald set the whole thing up?' Callen asked.

Belinda nodded. 'He wasn't invited to this wedding, and their family kind of shuns him now.'

'Why did he set it up?' Sam asked.

'Turns out that Don was in love with Harriet and wanted her for himself.'

'Oh,' Callen said slowly, understanding. 'So he tried to get rid of Charlie?'

'Not by killing him. He tried to make Charlie think that Harriet had cheated on him and didn't love him,' Ben said.

'Do you think that this Don might have something to do with Charlie's death?' Sam asked softly.

'Well, Don wasn't invited to this wedding,' Belinda said.

'We didn't want to run the risk of the whole thing happening again,' Ben finished for her.

'Do you know where Don is?' Callen asked.

'After that whole fiasco, Don was kinda shunned in Charlie's family, and after the first wedding, I haven't heard Don's name come from his mouth, ever. If he _has_ to mention him, he says "the cousin" or some variation of that.

'Alright, well, we'll look him up,' Sam said, getting up. 'We're sorry for your loss.'

Harriet suddenly cried out. 'How am I supposed to go on without him?'

Ben sighed heavily and followed the agents out of the room. 'I'm going to miss him. We met through business not long after he met Harriet and we got on like a house on fire. Soon he asked me to become a partner in his business.' Ben shook his head. 'He made sure to leave behind a good amount for Harriet. They planned to have a family. I guess it'll never happen now.'

'We really are sorry for your loss,' Sam said before patting the man on the shoulder and leaving him behind in the doorway of the church.

'Can't help but feel sorry for the bride,' Callen said, making his way to the Challenger.

'Tried to get married once; got accused of cheating. Tried to get married a second time; the groom was murdered,' Sam agreed.

'Hey, did you notice a kind of Densi vibe between the best man and the maid of honour?' Callen asked, leaning on his open door.

Sam thought about it for a moment. 'Now that you mention it…'

'Without the bickering,' Callen expanded on his theory.

'Yeah. They did have that vibe that Kensi and Deeks have got going on,' Sam said, looking back at the church, where said groomsman and bride's maid were now talking. 'They were even doing that thing that Densi does.'

'Which bit?' Callen asked dryly.

'The whole finishing each other's sentences,' Sam said.

'And there was tension.'

'_Exactly_ like Densi.'

'You think that there's something between them?'

Sam shrugged. 'There could be. It wouldn't affect the case if there was, so I'm not hugely interested.'

'That's what you _say_,' Callen said, 'but I know you. You're a huge softie underneath all that muscle.'

Sam shook his head and got into the car. 'Callen, how about we just stay two guys floating from case to case, and not play love doctor to random people who could be suspects?'

Callen sighed heavily and a little bit too dramatically. 'Alright. Let's go see what's got Densi in a huff.'

…

**Please review. Each review I receive makes my day a little better.**

**XD PurpleHipposRock**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**I'm an almost seventeen year old Aussie schoolgirl. I'm not exactly TV-show owning material. Therefore, we can conclude that I don't own NCIS: LA, or Panic! At The Disco. **

'_Oh but what a shame, what a shame the poor grooms bride is a – sh!'_

When Callen and Sam walked into the bullpen, the atmosphere was so tense that the air was almost thick.

'What's up, guys?' Callen asked easily, dropping into his seat.

'Kensi's a commitment phobe,' Deeks said, uninterestedly examining a file.

'Deeks is an insensitive jerk,' Kensi grumbled.

'What did Deeks do this time?' Sam asked with a becoming chuckle.

Deeks stared at the larger man, indignant. 'Why do you assume that _I_ did something? Kensi could've done something, making me upset with her, thus making her upset with me.'

'Alright, then. What did Kensi do?' Callen asked, grinning.

Deeks paused with a moment. 'Uh, actually… it was… it was me.'

'Deeks called me a freak,' Kensi grumbled into her coffee cup.

'Actually, I called you "freakish". There's a difference,' Deeks corrected her before ducking to avoid the thrown missile. He bent and picked it up. 'That was a dictionary. You threw a dictionary at me?'

'Yeah, look up the word "jerk",' Kensi said, glaring at him. 'There will be a picture of you there.'

'No, actually, I'm sure that there's a picture of my old boss,' Deeks said.

'Fine then.' Kensi pegged another book and scored a direct hit to the side of her partner's head. He let out a cry and fell from his chair. 'That's the thesaurus,' she snapped at him. 'Your name is sure to be in there under "idiot", "jerk" and "complete numbskull".' She then stormed out of the bullpen in a whirl of loose paperwork.

'Deeks, you can come up now,' Callen called cautiously to the man who had remained beneath his desk, assumedly to shelter from the storm.

There was a moment of silence.

'Deeks.' Sam leaned over the desk and looked down. 'Oh, my God. Callen, he's not conscious.'

'What?' Wide eyed, Callen walked around the desk and knelt by Deeks' side before checking for a pulse. 'Well, he's alive. Kensi must've thrown that _hard_.'

'Eric!' Sam summoned the man as he walked past the bullpen. 'Get Hetty. Kensi hit Deeks so hard that he was knocked out cold.'

Eric's eyes widened. 'Yeah.' He placed his energy drink on a desk and hurried off to find Hetty.

'Deeks,' Callen called, tapping the man on the scruffy cheek.

'Is there any blood?' Sam asked, picking up the abused thesaurus that was looking a little more worn now that it had been in a fast and damaging collision with Marty Deeks' head.

'No blood, just something that looks like it could turn out to be a very nasty bruise.'

'Kensi really must've been mad. She doesn't generally want to hurt him _this_ badly.'

Callen looked up and saw Hetty with relief. 'Oh, thank God, Hetty, you're here.'

'What's happened?' Hetty asked, stepping around the desk and kneeling by the unconscious Deeks' head.

'Kensi threw the thesaurus at Deeks' head,' Callen said helpfully.

Hetty looked at him, astonished. 'Why did she do that?'

'She was annoyed at him. What's new?' Sam asked.

'She's never been _this_ annoyed,' Hetty said, frowning before smoothing the hair off of Deeks' forehead. 'Alright, Eric, can you get me an icepack from the kitchenette, please?'

Eric hurried off.

'We can at least try to avoid swelling,' Hetty sighed. 'Other than that, we'll just have to wait for him to wake up.'

'Speaking of which…' They watched as Deeks unconsciously mumbled something.

'Marty,' Hetty called. 'Marty, can you open your eyes for me, please?'

Deeks grudgingly opened one eye, and then the other. 'Hi, Hetty,' he said, attempting to sit up.

'Don't try to sit up, Mr Deeks,' Hetty said kindly.

Deeks grunted. 'Let me guess. Kensi finally killed me, right?'

'Why would you think that?' Hetty asked, bewildered.

'Cos she's always threatened to kill me, and this does look a good lot like Hell,' Deeks sighed from his position on the floor.

'And what would Heaven look like?' Callen asked with a small smile.

Deeks thought about it for a moment. 'The beach.'

'And why exactly is this Hell?' Sam asked curiously.

'Well, you see, it's work. And if that wasn't enough, Kensi's not here, which means that it _must_ be hell cos she only belongs with the angels,' Deeks babbled. 'Say, _did_ Kensi kill me? Because my head feels awful funny.'

Callen finally gently broke it to the wounded man. 'Deeks, you're not dead.'

Deeks looked momentarily surprised. 'Huh. Figures.'

Sam patted him on the shoulder. 'But Kensi did knock you out.'

'Aha! Knew there had to be a good reason for my head to feel so funky.'

'Funky?' Callen asked, smirking.

'Like I did ten rounds with a two by four,' Deeks said. 'And then drank a whole bottle of Jack by myself.' He glanced at Hetty with a wince. 'Which I've never, ever done, cos I'm a sworn officer of the law, and it's a bad example.'

Hetty gave him a brief smile. 'Mr Beale, I don't suppose you could get Mr Deeks a glass of water, please?'

Eric nodded quickly. 'Sure.' He hurried off.

'Gee, that hurts,' Deeks said, rubbing his scruffy head.

'All that extra padding didn't help, then?' Sam asked, motioning to Deeks' fluffy blonde hair.

'Did you actually see Kensi throw the book?' Callen asked. 'It was thrown _hard_.'

'I _know_ that I saw it,' Deeks said thoughtfully. 'But I can't _remember_ it.'

'That's not unexpected, Mr Deeks,' Hetty said, patting Deeks sympathetically on the shoulder.

Kensi chose this moment to sulk back into the bullpen. The fact that she was holstering her weapon was not lost on any of the people there except Deeks, who was still flat on his back behind his desk.

'What?' she asked uncouthly and rather rudely when she found the majority of the people's eyes on her entrance.

'You knocked Deeks out,' Sam said. 'With the thesaurus.'

'Huh,' Kensi said, as if she wasn't much bothered by that fact. 'Maybe it knocked some sense into him. Not much else does.' She walked back out of the bullpen.

'Kensi!' Deeks called, trying to sit up, but Sam pressed him back down and Hetty reinforced that by pressing an icepack to his forehead. Still he struggled and finally he won free before getting up, clutching the icepack to his throbbing head and setting off after his very irate partner.

'Well, I wash my hands of them.' Hetty looked almost bewildered.

Callen did a double take. 'What?'

'I honestly don't know what to do with them,' Hetty said. 'I mean, the answer to _your_ partnership was to put you in a series of situations where you _had_ to trust each other or sustain considerable damage to your health.'

'But with Kensi and Deeks it's different,' Sam said.

'Exactly,' Hetty said, sighing. 'One moment they're getting on fine, like a proper pair of partners, and the next she's trying to kill him.'

Callen chuckled. 'That _does_ seem to be the case, doesn't it?'

'Well, Mr Callen, you're the team leader.'

Callen stared at the little lady, appalled. 'Are you saying what I think you're saying?' he asked, aghast.

'Disharmony is not good in a partnership, Mr Callen,' Hetty said. 'And it is really not good when it affects the team dynamic.'

Callen groaned. 'If you're suggesting what I think you're suggesting…'

'What about it suggested that it was a suggestion?' And with that, Hetty disappeared.

…

'Kens?' Stupid question. Deeks knew that she was here. He stepped into the small room that NCIS used to store the paper archives, a special hiding place of Kensi's.

'I don't wanna talk to you, Deeks,' she mumbled from an unseen corner.

'I know, but we really do need to talk.'

Kensi sighed heavily. 'Well, there's really no avoiding it, cos you're standing in the only exit.'

'My thoughts exactly.' He walked around a corner and found her, a tight curled up bundle surrounded by boxes of dusty, dead things. He squatted down next to her.

She looked up at him sheepishly before reaching up and covering the hand that held the icepack with own and lifting it away to carefully examine the lump there.

'I'm sorry,' she whispered before replacing his hand and removing her own.

Deeks shrugged. 'I was kinda asking for it.'

'You kinda were,' Kensi agreed.

He smiled before sinking down properly onto the floor next to her and sighing heavily. 'So, you gonna tell me what's up, or am I gonna have to consult my Kensi Ouija board?'

Kensi gave a watery laugh. 'You probably wish that that was a real thing.'

'Don't I,' Deeks agreed. 'Do I have to start guessing?'

Kensi sighed heavily. 'It's the twenty-first today,' she said, resting her head against his shoulder.

'Which anniversary is it?' Deeks asked. 'It's not your birthday, is it?'

Kensi scoffed. 'No.'

'Then what?'

She took a moment before saying, 'My parents got married on the twenty-first of January.'

Deeks made a soft 'ah' in acknowledgement, but didn't press the point.

She continued of her own volition, as if she needed to talk it out. 'They were happily married for thirteen years. And then, when I was about twelve, Dad had some bad luck with some investments. Lost a whole lot of money. And then the FBI started to investigate Dad on suspicion of embezzling. He didn't do it, I know he didn't, but before they could prove whether or not, he was murdered. But Mom thought that even just being investigated meant that you were guilty, and that combining with losing basically their retirement fund _and_ my college fund was the last straw. She left.'

Deeks put an arm around her.

There was a waver in her voice now. 'I remember, it was the week after my thirteenth birthday and I came down expecting Dad to be already gone. He uh, he surfed, you know. But I walked into the kitchen, and he was sitting there at the kitchen table… just staring at a wedding ring. He hadn't shaved and he looked like he'd been up all night. And he turned to me and said, "Mom's not coming home." At first I thought that he meant that she was dead, but, uh…' She shook her head. 'She was gone. She didn't even say goodbye.' She bit her bottom lip and his arm tightened around her. She hid her face against his shoulder. 'I haven't seen her since. And then Dad… They murdered Dad two years later.' She let out a choked cry. 'I don't even know who "they" is.'

This outpouring of information was the last thing that Deeks had expected, but he hid his surprise and gently pulled her into his arms, gently patting her back. She wasn't crying – no, she'd already shed all of the tears that were going to be shed over this subject, but there was a suspicious dampness to her eyes that she wished would go away.

Deeks slowly released her. 'What can I do, Kensi?'

This question surprised her. She expected sympathy, sadness, maybe even a misguided attempt to comfort something that needed no comfort. Instead, he wanted to _help_.

'Deeks, I…'

Suddenly, he drew away. 'Kens, don't do this.'

'Don't do what?' she asked.

'Be Wonder Woman. I know that you're strong, and you're tough, but Kensi, even Wonder Woman had a heart. You can't do this alone. We're here to help you – _I'm_ here to help you. I _want_ to help, but you're making it so damned hard.' All of a sudden, he was mad, drawing away from her and getting up, pressing the icepack back against his sore head.

Kensi got up too. 'Deeks, you know me. I don't know how to be any other way.'

Deeks glared at her, furious. 'All you've got to do is ask,' he said savagely. 'And it would help if you didn't throw books at people's heads.' And he stormed out of the room, slamming the door on the way out.

People looked up at the sound of the door slamming, and watched as Deeks stomped into the range and began to obliterate one of the targets that hung there, head injury or no.

'For some reason I'm led to believe that that didn't go half as well as it should've,' Sam said, looking over at Callen.

Callen winced at the sound of Deeks' Beretta echoing through the OPS and nodded in agreement.

…

**I'm pretty sure that I haven't updated for a while now, so it's time to grovel. It's a whole new school year here in Oz, and I am absolutely drowned in homework. And if anyone can explain to me where I might use polynomials in real life, in a situation that might actually happen, that would be much appreciated.**

**But because it's been a while, I treated myself to a little bit of Densi fun. What did you think? Did I do them justice? And did I do justice to that little peek into Kensi's backstory?**

**Let me know – I adore reviews, purple hippopotami and the ukulele. But you should only concern yourself with the "reviews" part of that – by leaving one. **

**XD PurpleHipposRock**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

**I don't own NCIS: LA or Panic! At The Disco. Duh.**

'_I'd chime in with a 'Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamn door?'_

Callen looked up when Deeks entered the bullpen and deposited himself behind his desk. Kensi followed not long after, a sulky expression on her face.

Callen got up and stared at the two of them. They both stared back with expressions stolen from two children who are obstinate in that they _won't_ speak to the other.

'Look, I don't know what's going on between you two,' Callen said slowly. 'But if you don't resolve it soon, I'm going to bench both of you and prevent you from participating in this investigation.'

Kensi let out a choked exclamation, while Deeks stared at him with an expression which suggested exactly what he was thinking. _Are you kidding me?_

'I'm serious,' Callen said sternly. 'Whatever is up with you two has to be resolved, or I'm not going to let you two go out into the field. You two obviously are having problems, and with problems comes a lack of trust. I cannot have two people on my team that do not trust each other.'

'Well, Callen, it might help if you didn't partner me with a psychopath that throws thesauruses at peoples' heads,' Deeks said to him, folding his arms.

'Or if you didn't partner _me_ with pushy, fluffy idiots who don't know when to shut up and leave something alone,' Kensi said, refusing to even look at her partner.

Callen growled before taking hold of Kensi with one hand while grabbing a handful of Deeks' hair with the other.

'Ow!' Deeks yelped, trying to pull away from the team leader who had apparently reached the end of his fuse.

'Let me go, Callen!' Kensi shrieked, a dangerous spark in her eyes.

'Grab their weapons, please Sam,' Callen said to his partner.

Sam nodded and quickly unarmed his teammates.

'_All_ of them, please,' Callen said, nodding at Kensi.

'Oh, right.' Sam grinned at him before taking away _all_ of Kensi's knives and her backup gun in a holster at her ankle.

Kensi glared mutely at the hapless Sam as he quickly checked Deeks over as well, withdrawing a knife with a surprised look.

'Thank you.' Callen immediately dragged the younger pair out of the bullpen, to the astonishment of a Hetty who watched them pass her in absolute silence before heading into the bullpen.

'What was that?' Hetty questioned Sam, who grinned at her.

'Callen got fed up with them,' Sam explained.

'Ah.' Hetty sat down with him to wait. A sudden thought occurred to her. 'I don't suppose you have a copy of Staff Sergeant Gould's will?'

…

'You are going to stay here until you work this out,' Callen said from the other side of the bars.

'Seriously?' Deeks asked, his arms crossed as he faced the older man. 'You put us in the dungeons? What's next, ritualistic torture and feeding us bread and water?'

'No, the bread and water punishment is taking it a bit too far,' Callen said slowly. 'But the torture… well, it's up to _you_ whether I have to take it _that_ far.' And he promptly left before the two could say anything.

Kensi sighed heavily before sinking down onto the floor and looking up at him. 'Well?'

Deeks sighed and sat down as well. 'I don't know. This isn't something that's going to be solved by a simple "I'm sorry".'

Kensi was silent for a moment. 'It could help.'

Deeks paused. 'It could,' he admitted.

'But who goes first?' Kensi asked.

Deeks reached over and took her hands. 'I'm sorry. I should've known not to push so hard, but I did and you're well in your right to call me an idiot.'

'No, I'm not,' Kensi quickly corrected him. 'Because you're not.' She glanced down at their joined hands. 'It's my fault too, so I guess that I'm sorry too.'

Deeks laughed softly. 'Well, now that we've figured that out, how do we get out of here?'

'Oh, Callen will be back in a couple of minutes,' Kensi said, as if she was sure of it.

'You make that sound like this has happened before.'

'Oh, it has,' Kensi said with a smile.

'Seriously?'

'Seriously. Renko and Sam were having some… troubles. Almost as bad as me and you.'

'So Callen shoved them into your temporary lock up?' Deeks asked with an amused smile.

'Actually, it was Hetty who did it, and when Callen laughed she threatened to put _him_ in there too.'

Deeks laughed, and Kensi joined in after a moment, and that was how Callen found them five minutes later – laughing so hard that they were rendered breathless for a good ten minutes afterwards.

Sam stared at them curiously as they made their way into the bullpen, still laughing so hard that they had to hold each other up.

'What's so funny?' he inquired.

Callen looked bewildered. 'I have no idea,' he said, leading them into the bullpen.

Sam chuckled softly. 'Are you two going to laugh all day or are we actually going to get some work done?'

'Sorry,' Deeks gasped, wiping tears out of his eyes. 'It's just so…'

'So what?' Sam asked, watching him.

'I think the word would be "funny",' Callen said with a wry smile.

'Not at all, Mr Callen,' Hetty said before opening her red laptop and sending some information to the plasma. 'Now, Sam and I had a little chat while you two were down there, cackling away.'

The word "cackle" set them off again, but Kensi managed to choke out, 'Continue, Hetty, please. It only _seems_ like we're not paying attention.'

Hetty looked bemused, but continued. 'According to Mr Hanna, there was an incident two years prior to this wedding where the couple tried to get married but were prevented from doing so by the groom's cousin, who accused the bride of cheating.'

That sobered them up quickly. 'Geez. That's rough,' Deeks said, looking surprised.

'Very,' Hetty agreed.

'I suggested that we bring the cousin in for questioning,' Sam said.

'And _I_ suggested that you bring in the bride for questioning,' Hetty said.

Callen looked surprised. 'Why the bride?'

'We had a look at Sergeant Gould's will while you were away,' Hetty said. 'He left everything to his fiancé.'

'A motive!' Deeks exclaimed before he and Kensi cracked up into more laughter.

'Okay, Mr and Mrs Laugh-A-Lot, you can interrogate Cousin Don as soon as you stop laughing so hard that you can't communicate,' Callen said, shaking his head and smiling. 'We'll take the bride.'

'Yup,' Deeks managed to gasp out before he and Kensi laughed their way out of the building.

'What are we going to do with them?' Sam asked Hetty.

Hetty shook her head. 'I honestly don't know.'

…

'Mr Gould, right?' Kensi sat down opposite him, while Deeks took a seat next to him.

"Cousin Don" was immediately flattered by Kensi's attention. 'Call me Don, sweetheart.'

'My name's not "sweetheart",' Kensi said, trying to keep the nastiness from her voice and mostly succeeding until only Deeks could discern it in her tone. 'Special Agent Kensi Blye and our liaison with the LAPD, Detective Marty Deeks.'

…

'Why am I here, Agent Callen?' Harriet asked, still resplendent in her wedding gown.

'Because we're not entirely sure as to whether you're telling the truth,' Callen responded gravely, sitting down opposite her.

'You forgot to mention in our earlier interview that you're the sole beneficiary of Staff Sergeant Charlie Gould's estate,' Sam informed her.

Harriet's mouth dropped open, and she covered it with her hand. 'Oh, my… Charlie hinted that he had a big surprise for me at the rehearsal dinner, but I never thought that… All of it?'

…

'_Mr_ _Gould_,' Kensi said pointedly, 'have you heard about your cousin's decease?'

'Who, Charlie?' Don looked fairly unabashed. 'Yeah, I heard about it.'

'You don't sound too cut up about it,' Deeks noted.

'Guy didn't deserve what he had,' Don said.

…

'All of it, including his part of the business that he shared with Mr Harrison,' Callen said.

'Oh, my God,' she whispered. 'But that's worth _millions_.'

'Exactly,' Sam said. 'Are you sure that you didn't know about Sergeant Gould's will and change of beneficiary?'

…

'Harriet's beautiful, and good, and _perfect_, and Charles didn't deserve to have her _and_ all of his _success_,' Don said mockingly.

'Except he doesn't even have his life now, does he?' Deeks asked, folding his arms.

Don frowned. 'I don't like the sound of what you're insinuating, sir. Do I need a lawyer?'

…

'No.' Harriet frowned. 'He saw his lawyer a couple of weeks ago but I thought that it was just marriage arrangements.'

'Pre-nup?' Callen suggested dryly.

'We signed one of those two months ago,' Harriet said, straight away. 'The reason that the wedding didn't work out the first time was because Don told Charlie that I was marrying him because of his money, which was _not_ true.'

…

'Just a question, Mr Gould,' Deeks said slowly. 'Why did you stop the first wedding?'

'I love Harriet,' Don said, eyes blazing. 'And Harriet loves me. She just cannot accept that fact.'

'And so, you killed the Staff Sergeant because you figured that with him out of the way, it would make it easier for Harriet to accept it, yeah?' Deeks asked suddenly after exchanging a glance with Kensi.

…

'Poor Don,' Harriet murmured, twisting her diamond and ruby engagement ring around her finger. 'He thinks that I love him.' She shook her head ruefully and sighed. 'It was one moment of weakness. We were young – it was just before I'd met Charlie… He told me, over and over again, that I was marrying the wrong cousin.'

'Don thinks that you're in love with him?' Callen asked softly.

'Yeah,' Harriet said softly.

'Are you?' Sam asked.

…

'No!' Don exclaimed. 'I would never _kill_ my cousin. Sure, he managed to ensnare my true love with money and promises of fictitious love, but I would not open her eyes to these falsehoods by _killing_ Charles.'

Kensi and Deeks exchanged another glance. 'So, you say that you didn't do it?' Kensi asked.

'_Yes_,' Don insisted.

…

'Miss Mason, I realised that you may be offended by this question, but it's a question that we have to ask,' Sam said gently. 'Where were you between eight thirty and eleven thirty this morning?'

'I was getting ready for my wedding,' Harriet said, as if it were obvious.

'For three hours?' Callen asked incredulously.

Harriet looked down before biting her bottom lip and saying sheepishly, 'Five, actually.'

'You spent _five_ hours getting ready for _one_ hour of your life?' Callen asked, his eyes wide.

…

'Mr Gould, where were you between eight thirty and eleven thirty this morning?' Deeks asked Don.

'Nowhere near the wedding,' Don assured him.

'You told me where you weren't. _I_ asked where you were.' The lawyer in Deeks pulled Don up on his avoidance of the question.

Don sighed and looked warily at Kensi. 'Does _she_ have to be in here?'

'You got something to be ashamed of, Don?' Deeks asked jovially.

Don buttoned up his mouth and refused to say anything, staring mutely at Kensi. Finally, she sighed and got up.

'You do know that I'll just watch the footage from the camera?' was Kensi's parting shot.

Don looked nervously in the direction of the camera before leaning in and whispering, rather loudly, it can be said, 'I was at Bare Elegance.'

There was a loud snort from the direction of the door. 'You were at a strip club?' Kensi asked as she re-entered. 'Buddy, I've _worked_ in a strip club.'

Deeks looked at her in a new light. 'You have?' he asked, looking at her.

'Deeks, murder suspect.'

'Right, sorry.' He paused for a moment before turning back to her. 'Point of clarification – it's a bikini bar. I believe we've had this conversation before.'

Kensi groaned loudly. 'Mr Gould, will you excuse us? We're going to check that.' She grabbed the collar of Deeks' shirt and pulled him out of the interrogation room, much to the amusement of Callen and Sam who were standing out in the anteroom after their interrogation with Harriet.

'Eric's checking it,' Sam informed them.

'Good,' Kensi said, releasing Deeks and pouring herself a cup of coffee. 'What did the bride tell you?'

'She was getting ready for the wedding at the time of her groom's death,' Callen said. '_Five_ hours,' he said, shaking his head.

'That's nothing,' Kensi told him. 'I had a girlfriend who started getting ready the night before.'

Callen gaped at her.

'What about the will?' Deeks asked.

Sam answered, 'She didn't actually know that she was Staff Sergeant Gould's beneficiary. He hadn't informed her, probably wanted to make it a surprise.'

Deeks frowned. 'Did they have a pre-nup?'

'Yup.' Callen sighed softly. 'And Cousin Don claims that he still loves the bride?'

'Uh huh. And he's under the delusion that the bride's in love with him too,' Kensi said dryly.

Sam snorted softly. 'And his alibi is that he was in a bikini bar?'

'Yeah… Do all men know the difference between a bikini bar and a strip club?' Kensi asked curiously.

'Yeah,' Callen said.

'Of course,' Deeks said.

'Yes,' Sam said, before pausing. 'Unless you talk to my wife.'

Kensi laughed softly and shook her head. 'You men. Is Eric checking Don's alibi as well?'

Callen nodded.

Suddenly, Eric's face appeared on the plasma screen which had formerly shown footage of their murder suspects. 'Hey, guys.'

'You have impeccable timing,' Kensi said to him.

'He really does,' Callen agreed. 'Is it ESP, crystals or telepathy?'

Eric grinned. 'Neither.'

'It's your Ouija Board, isn't it?' Deeks asked.

Eric laughed softly. 'We've confirmed both your suspect's alibis. Security cameras confirm that the bride was indeed getting ready from six thirty until eleven, upon which time she got into a limo and went to the church, where she arrived at eleven twenty-five.'

'What about Cousin Don?' Kensi asked.

'I've got footage of Don getting out of his car at eight o'clock outside Bare Elegance. His GPS signal is in the building until a quarter past twelve, upon which time he came out of the building-' showing them the footage '-and goes to a shopping mall, upon which time I grew bored watching him and figured that that was all you guys really needed to know. He has a pretty solid alibi.'

'Great. You just alibied out all of our suspects,' Kensi grumbled.

Eric winced. 'Sorry. Just doing my job, guys.' He disappeared from the screen.

Deeks turned to the agents. 'Now what?'

…

**Review if you liked it!**

**XD PurpleHipposRock **


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

**Of course I don't own it. This would be an episode by now if I did. ;p**

'_No, it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality…'_

Kensi became aware of Deeks' steady, clear blue gaze on her as she pulled out of the marina's parking lot.

'What?' she finally asked, barely heard over the music pounding over the stereo.

He reached out and turned down the music to a volume at which he could make himself heard without making himself hoarse. 'I still don't get why you don't believe in marriage.'

'I… I told you, Deeks,' Kensi stumbled slightly. 'It's a waste of money.'

'No, that's your reason for not believing in weddings,' Deeks replied. 'Marriage itself doesn't actually cost that much.'

'My parents.'

Deeks folded his arms.

'Alright, so it wasn't so much my parents as much as it was my mother.'

'Your mother who walked away from you?'

'She walked away from us both,' Kensi said. 'So much for "death do us part",' she grumbled.

Deeks looked over at her tenderly before confessing something. 'I was going to get married once.'

Kensi's eyes shot to him before snapping back to the road. 'What happened?' she asked quietly.

He let out a soft sigh. 'She left me before the priest had a chance to say "'til death do you part".'

Kensi paused before saying, 'I'm sorry, Deeks.'

Deeks shook his head. 'It was a long time ago. I don't…'

Kensi stopped at a red light and looked over at him. 'What was her name?'

Deeks sighed. 'Sophia. She was, uh… she was my childhood sweetheart. We'd known each other since I was twelve and she was eleven, and she'd moved to the area. You could, uh, kind of say that it was love at first sight. It's funny, but… she looked just like you. Except for her eyes. They were so dark that they were almost black.'

Kensi placed a gentle hand on his arm before returning her attention back to the road. 'What happened?'

'I was… I was at law school almost all the time and she was working in a bar, trying to make ends meet. I was working in a restaurant on weekends and we barely saw each other for weeks on end.'

'She met someone in the bar, didn't she?'

Deeks turned to her, and she could see the pleading in his eyes out of the corner of her own. 'She loved me, she really did.'

'I know, Deeks. I believe you.'

Deeks looked down at his hands. 'The man she met… he actually was a lawyer. In fact, I went on to work for him for almost a year. He was rich, handsome and he wasn't a struggling law student who liked to moonlight as a surfer in his rare times off.'

'Deeks, you don't have to-'

'No, Kens. I… I didn't talk about, _haven't_ talked about it to anyone, really, and now… I need to get it off my chest.' He took her silence as approval for him to keep talking. 'I… I came home early one day from law school – my lecturer had caught the flu and they couldn't find a last minute replacement, so in the end they just called it off.' His voice was slightly hoarse now. 'I can remember it like it was yesterday. I walked in the front door and I remember picking up her shoes because they were kind of strewn across the living room floor, along with her shirt. This wasn't unusual, because she usually got home just after I'd left and just fall into bed, because she worked almost all night. I picked up her shirt and put it away but then I started to hear… noises.'

Kensi let out a soft gasp, as if she knew what came next.

'You know the worst part?' His voice was barely a whisper by now. 'He was _married_. He wasn't gonna leave his wife for _her_, a girl in a bar. So why did she leave _me_?' He buried his face in his hands. 'I should've seen the signs, Kens.' His voice broke and he let out a soft, choking cry. 'She would leave her engagement ring at home when she went to work. She'd started working out more. Sometimes she wouldn't come home at night. God, I was so stupidly innocent!' He struck out at the dashboard and left a dent.

'Deeks.' Kensi put a hand on his arm. 'It's not your fault. _She_ cheated on _you_.'

'I could've done something different,' Deeks choked out. 'I could've tried to spend some more time with her. I could've…' But at this point, he broke down completely, sobbing into his hands.

'Oh, Deeks.' Kensi shifted in her seat so that she could put both arms around him to comfort the distraught man. She pressed a gentle kiss to his hair and rubbed one hand up and down his back.

Finally, he stopped sobbing, took a deep breath and sat back up, his eyes reddened slightly.

'You okay?' Kensi asked softly.

'I… I'll be okay.'

'I'm sorry I…'

'No, no. I know your deep, dark secrets. It's only fair that you should know mine.'

There was a quiet moment before Deeks chuckled softly. 'We are two screwed up people, you know that?'

Kensi nodded. 'Yup. My fiancé got PTSD and left me on Christmas morning. Yours cheated on you and then left you for a married man. We have no luck, romantically.'

Deeks paused before saying, 'I don't actually look at it like that.'

'How do you look at it, then?'

'Well…' Deeks stretched out as well as he could in his seat. 'You were, what, twenty-one when he left you?'

'Yeah.'

'And I was barely twenty. I think that our fiancés leaving was the universe talking to us.'

Kensi stared at him for a moment before saying sceptically, 'The universe?'

He nodded. 'Yup,' he said, popping the "p". 'The 'verse was talking to us through those events.'

'Hmmm. What was the "'verse" saying?'

'It was saying "No. It's not your time. It's not the right one." That's why they left us. It was much too early and we hadn't fulfilled the roles that the universe had predetermined for us.'

'Which were an LAPD detective and an NCIS agent?'

'Not just that. I think the universe worked in this way so that we would become partners.'

'You think that the universe split us up from our fiancés so that we would meet?' Kensi asked sceptically.

He nodded. 'Yes. If you had gotten married, you never would've worked for NCIS, right?'

'Yeah,' she said slowly.

'And if _I_ had gotten married, I'd be a boring old lawyer right about now.'

She laughed softly at the image that presented. 'A couple of kids running around.'

'Macaroni necklaces hanging around your neck?' Deeks suggested.

'Being proudly presented finger-paintings done in kindergarten that morning?' Kensi grinned at him.

'Toads in the bathtub,' Deeks sighed.

'Toads in the bathtub?' Kensi asked, alarmed.

'My parents wouldn't let me have a puppy, so one afternoon I went out and caught a couple of toads.'

'What happened?'

'Oh, Mom found them and screamed the house down. Dad was, for once, sober and he laughed so hard when he found out what I'd done. Promised me he'd buy me a puppy the next day. One of the only things he ever promised me that he came through on.'

Kensi laughed softly. 'You named him Monty, didn't you?'

Deeks nodded and smiled. 'Yeah. I did.'

'What happened to him?'

'Died of old age.'

Kensi paused before turning to him and saying, 'Deeks… I'm glad that you're my partner. I'm glad that the universe stepped in.'

Deeks grinned at her. 'Me too.'

Kensi paused before asking, 'If the universe didn't want us to get married to _them_, then who _did_ they want us to get married to?'

Deeks shrugged, but kept his eyes on her. 'I don't know. But I know that if I keep my eyes open, I'll find her.'

Kensi laughed softly. 'Sounds like something Hetty told me once. She told me that if I kept my eyes open, that he would find me.'

'You're honestly not that hard to find,' Deeks told her, grinning. 'You're usually the most beautiful woman in the room, and if you're not then you're the one that kicking ass.'

She smiled back, and didn't pull back when he leaned closer.

'And you know what else?' The grin had dropped from his face and he was being almost scarily serious at that moment.

'What?' she breathed back, and he could feel her warm breath dance across his sun-kissed skin.

His eyes flickered down to her lips and then back up to her eyes, and Kensi suddenly longed for his lips to meet with hers. It wasn't the first time she'd felt such a longing, nor would it be the first time she'd had such a longing fulfilled*, but before they could do anything more than even just think about kissing the other, a phone, rather like an annoying wasp, buzzed, ruining the moment.

Both pulled away, Kensi blushing slightly, Deeks swallowing heavily as he managed to extract his phone from one of the pockets of his very tight jeans. Kensi looked away very quickly as she realised that she was staring at said jeans.

Deeks let out a wry chuckle. 'Check it out.' He held out the phone for her to read, and she marvelled at the message, so close to the actual truth without even knowing it. "Densi, stop making out and get back here. There's work to be done. ;-D"

Kensi laughed as well. 'Who's it from?'

'Callen,' Deeks said, shoving the phone away. He looked around. 'Hey, where _are_ we?'

'Oh, I, uh, pulled over…' Kensi looked around and frowned. 'We're downtown.'

'We're nowhere near where we need to be,' Deeks said, laughing.

'I wasn't paying attention,' Kensi said distractedly.

'Obviously. Or maybe you were paying attention _sub_consciously,' Deeks smirked before pointing out a familiar landmark. 'You would make for the nearest doughnut store.'

Kensi shrugged modestly. 'It's a talent. What can I say?'

Deeks' stomach growled loudly. 'I dunno, but my stomach's saying something rather obvious.'

Kensi grinned at him. 'Come on, then. We've got no suspects, no clues and no witnesses. I think we can take the five minutes to get some doughnuts.'

…

**Just a little break from the case, plus some good Deeks angst. I figured that there has to be some ghosts in Deeks' romantic past. And some might see the little **_**Castle**_** reference I've put in as well. Think season three premiere. Hope you liked it. Review if you did. Or even if you didn't. I like feedback.**

**Ten million apologies for taking so long in updating this. I am literally buried under a mountain of homework, assignments, tests, debates and, as if the teachers thought that that wasn't enough, musical performances. So take this chapter as my way of apologising, and if I take this long in updating again, start yelling at me. I'll get there eventually.**

**Thank you for all the reviews, alerts and favourites. Hope this chapter inspired you to review some more.**

**XD PurpleHipposRock**

***See "The Ballad Of Mona Lisa" for more.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

**The chances of me owning either band or TV show, let alone both, are the same chances that purple plot hippopotami exist. Enough said?**

'_I'd chime in with a 'Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamn door?'_

Callen chuckled softly as he sent the text message to Deeks.

'What's so funny?' Sam asked, peering over the top of his laptop.

'Oh, just a text,' Callen said.

'Uh huh.'

Callen was quiet for a moment, watching Sam complete his paperwork, before asking, 'Is it just me, or is there something between Kensi and Deeks?'

'There's always been something between Kensi and Deeks. It's widely known as the "thing". Where have you been the last year or so?' Sam asked, grinning widely at him.

'I've been right here,' Callen assured his partner. 'I'm the one that's been saving your ass.'

Sam snorted. 'Is that what you call it?'

Callen sighed before returning to the original topic. 'But, is it a _thing_ or a _thing_?'

'Well, what sort of _thing_?' Sam asked.

'Is it a romantic sort of thing, or a friendly thing, or a totally indifferent thing?' Callen questioned idly.

Sam blinked at him. 'I think that we can agree that they aren't indifferent. There is definitely _something_ there.'

'And I think that we can agree that there is tension between them,' Callen nodded.

'Yup,' Sam agreed. 'And sometimes I think that Deeks is _that_ close to doing something stupidly brave because of his so-called non-existent feelings for her.'

'He _has_ done some stupidly brave things because of his so-called non-existent feelings for her,' Callen chuckled.

Sam frowned. 'Have we been watching the same Densi?'

'The time outside the hospital. He was barely out of surgery when he ran down three flights of stairs to save her from Vakar.' Callen referred to the time when Deeks was shot in an effort to get to his partner.

'He _did_ rip open his stitches and risk collapsing a lung,' Sam allowed.

'Risk? He almost did. Kensi was damn well ready to kill him when she found that out.'

'Which suggests that there are some feelings on her side as well,' Sam said.

'Well, did you see her on the Sanders/Martindale case?' Callen asked. 'When Deeks locked lips with the other woman, well, I thought that Kensi was either gonna slug Deeks when he got out of that interrogation room or pull her gun and shoot him. As it was, I found her that night in a crummy little bar drowning her sorrows in shots of tequila. I ended up taking her home after she got so hammered that she slugged a guy _three_ times in the face and then stepped, _stepped_ on the guy's balls because he groped her ass. She would've shot him except I confiscated her weapon after the third round.'

Sam chuckled wryly. 'Anyone else think that she wasn't seeing the guy's face, but Deeks'?'

'I think it helped that the guy was blonde, blue eyed and had a sort of surfer-dude vibe,' Callen laughed.

Suddenly, the heavenly scent of doughnuts wafted into the bullpen and gave Sam and Callen fair warning that Kensi and Deeks were about to enter their gossip session.

'Densi returns!' Callen called as Kensi and Deeks entered the bullpen. Deeks was holding a large white pastry box, and he offered it to both men, revealing large, tasty-looking doughnuts.

'How did you know that we were getting hungry?' Sam asked, taking a jam and cream filled one.

'Hunch,' Deeks said airily.

'More like the fact that your stomach started grumbling so loudly that I could hear it over the stereo,' Kensi shot back, grinning at her partner as she put her weapon away in her desk drawer.

'I thought that that was yours,' Deeks said to her, smiling broadly.

'Maybe it was both at once,' Kensi quipped, taking a doughnut from the box and consuming it in three bites.

'Slow down, there,' Deeks said, grinning at her. 'Take the time to _enjoy_ it, Kens.'

'I'm starving,' Kensi protested, taking another and eating it in a few more bites.

Deeks shook his head. 'I don't know why I try.'

'I don't know either. Give up,' Kensi advised him.

'Oh, Fern,' Deeks sighed. 'You're the reason I never give up.' He smiled at her, a sweet smile that was somewhat out of context considering the conversation, and Sam and Callen exchanged a confused glance.

'So, what's been happening here?' Kensi asked, leaning back in her seat and luxuriously sipping her coffee.

'Nothing much,' Sam said to them. 'We've been waiting for Nell and Eric to come up with something, anything helpful, but there's nothing so far.'

'Nothing?' Deeks asked, sounding surprised. 'But this is Nell and Eric we're talking about here. They've _always_ got something.'

'Not this time, apparently,' Callen sighed, sipping his coffee.

Suddenly, Eric appeared on the staircase. 'We've got something,' he singsonged, grinning at them.

'He's been developing ESP,' Callen said, shaking his head. 'No doubt about it. It's definitely telepathy.'

Deeks grinned. 'Maybe it's crystals. Or maybe he's been consulting one of those online psychic consultants?'

'Shut up, Deeks,' Kensi said, passing him with a doughnut in one hand and her coffee in the other.

'You can't take those up into Ops!' Deeks called after her.

Kensi groaned and turned back, quickly eating the doughnut and washing it down with her piping hot coffee without a wince.

'How can you do that?' Deeks asked his partner, following her through the automatic sliding doors.

'Do what?' Kensi asked, turning to him with nonchalance.

'Drink all of that coffee. It was still basically boiling,' Deeks replied. 'It was a full mug.'

'I guess I've just evolved,' Kensi grinned at him before leaving him behind on the stairs.

Deeks sighed and looked at the other men. 'You do know that you've left me partnered with a psychopath, right? I'm even starting to miss Sam.'

Callen chuckled. 'You can have him, if I get Kens. She's a lot better to look at.'

Deeks nodded. 'There is that, but at least Sam's sane.'

Callen thought about it for a moment. 'Now, there is a dilemma. Do you choose the sane one, or the pretty one?'

'Gee, Callen, I didn't know you felt about Sam in that way,' Kensi said, grinning at them as she came into the conversation at the wrong moment.

'Aw, Kens, you know that you're the pretty one here,' Deeks said to her. 'You and Nell.'

'What about Hetty?' Callen asked, watching as Hetty quietly approached Deeks from behind.

Deeks thought about it for a moment, biting his bottom lip in a way that made Kensi want to vault over the centre console and kiss him so much that he'd wonder if his tonsils were still in place. 'Hetty's… mysterious, and she's kinda… regal, like a queen, or something. Like even though she might never be the prettiest woman in the room, but she'll be the one that demands the most respect, and that means a lot too.'

Kensi, Callen and Sam watched for a moment as Hetty processed this speech, and then waited for the fireworks.

Which never came.

'Thank you, Mr Deeks.' There was a tone in Hetty's voice that was rarely there, a tone that suggested that there was some humanity in Hetty; that suggested that she wasn't all ninja warrior and marionette, chess player master.

Deeks jumped before groaning. 'Jeez, Hetty. Can you not do that?'

She smiled and patted him on the arm. 'Why would I want to lose my advantage of surprise, Mr Deeks? Mr Beale, Miss Jones, if you could?'

'Well, at the crime scene, Rose told Deeks that her best guess for cause of death was poisoning, right?' Eric asked.

'Yeah,' Deeks confirmed slowly.

'We think we know what he could've been poisoned with,' Nell said, virtually bouncing.

'Formaldehyde.' Eric beamed at the bemused agents and detective.

'Excuse me?' Callen asked.

'We think he could've been poisoned with formaldehyde,' Nell clarified.

Sam blinked. '_When_ exactly did you get your degrees in pathology and toxicology?'

'We didn't, that's why we're waiting for Rose to confirm,' Eric said.

Deeks shook his head. 'No, explain it again. _Why_ do you think that he was poisoned with formaldehyde?'

'Well, this was a premeditated murder. I mean, he wasn't bashed over the head with a vase, or something. And if it were premeditated, formaldehyde would be a very symbolic way of murdering him,' Nell informed them.

'I still feel like we're missing something,' Kensi said. She paused. 'Hang on… Deeks, is this how you feel all of the time?' She took in Hetty's look. 'Sorry. Inappropriate question. Appropriate question; why would it be symbolic?'

'Staff Sergeant Gould volunteered at the local museum. He specialised in taxidermy.'

'Taxidermy? Stuffing dead animals?' Deeks asked, frowning.

'_Preserving_ dead animals,' Eric corrected him. 'They use formaldehyde to preserve them, too.'

'You think that he was killed over taxidermy?' Callen asked sceptically.

Nell shrugged. 'He could've been, and you guys always say to cover all the bases, so, we are.'

Callen sighed and looked at Sam. 'We do say that, don't we?'

Sam nodded.

'So, who gets the exciting fieldtrip to the museum to talk to the people who volunteered with the Staff Sergeant?' Deeks asked dryly.

Immediately, Callen and Sam pointed at Kensi and Deeks, and Kensi and Deeks pointed at Callen and Sam.

'We find ourselves in a stalemate,' Deeks said, narrowing his eyes at the older agents.

'Not at all,' Callen said lightly. 'We're pulling seniority. Bye, Densi. Have fun.'

'Hetty!' Kensi appealed to the older woman.

Hetty looked at Kensi inscrutably before pausing and nodding. 'Mr Callen, Mr Hanna, you'll be taking this one.'

'But Hetty-'

'Buts are for goats, Mr Callen. Off you go. I need to check on Mr Deeks' head wound.'

Kensi blushed bright red, which Deeks took on an immediately unassuming air as the senior agents stared daggers at him before leaving in a cloud of grumbles.

'Thanks, Hetty,' Deeks sighed as soon as Callen and Sam were out of earshot.

'I was serious about that, Mr Deeks,' Hetty said seriously.

Deeks' mouth dropped open a little. 'Oh. Really?'

'Really,' Hetty confirmed, shepherding the other two agents out of the OPS Centre and into the bullpen, where she pointed Deeks into a chair. Kensi sheepishly slunk out of the room muttering something about an appointment with the punching bag.

Deeks watched her go before turning to Hetty with a sheepish grin on his face. 'So, what's the verdict, Hetty?' he asked, wincing as she pressed a cold compress to his slightly swelling, purpled forehead.

'I believe you'll live,' she replied with a wry smile. 'It'll hurt like hell for a few days, and you're gonna have a pounding headache tomorrow morning, but I don't think your life is in any true danger.'

'Unless I piss her off again.'

'Unless you piss her off again,' Hetty agreed. 'If I might ask, what set this off in the first place?'

Deeks sighed heavily. 'Well, she… I… Actually, it started with my sister.'

'Your sister?' Hetty asked, frowning.

'She's getting married soon. I only found out… this morning. Wow. It feels like forever since I found that out, but it's only been a few hours.'

'Congratulations,' Hetty murmured, pushing his hair back off of his forehead to check the mottled skin.

'And then the case turned out to have a wedding connection, which led Kensi and me-'

'Kensi and I,' Hetty quietly corrected.

'Sorry, Kensi and _I_ to have a little… discussion on marriage, which, as always, turned into an argument.'

'As it always seems to do so with you two.'

'And it kinda just escalated, I guess. It probably doesn't help that it's her-'

'Parent's wedding anniversary,' Hetty interrupted again.

'You know everything, don't you?' Deeks asked her with an exasperated look.

'Not quite, Mr Deeks.'

'I wish you'd tell me why you partnered me and Kensi up.'

'Kensi and _I_.'

'Sorry.'

Hetty was silent for a moment as she checked for a concussion, before saying, 'You're the very essence of yin and yang.'

Deeks snorted. 'We figured that one out, Hetty. And you know that old saying, opposites attract? They don't. I push and she pulls. I say yes and she says no. I open up and she closes down. One minute she blows hot and the next it's cold shoulder.'

'Mixing your metaphors, Mr Deeks.'

'Hetty. Stop correcting my grammar and tell me something useful, _please_.'

'Kensi, before you came along, was living the very essence of an unhealthy life.'

'You mean eating crap and exercising too much? She's done that ever since I've known her, and she shows no signs of letting up.'

'I don't just mean physically unhealthy. Emotionally and spiritually, she's broken.'

'Again, you don't have to tell me that.'

'Not just in the ways that you know her, Marty.'

Deeks glanced warily at Hetty as she settled herself in the armchair opposite him.

'Every second morning I would watch as she staggered into the bullpen at the crack of dawn, still in the most obscene and absolutely inappropriate dress I'd ever seen before collecting a more appropriate outfit from the wardrobe and making herself decent for her teammates to see her. And every other morning, the only trace of her restless night would be her eyes, still puffy and bloodshot from crying herself into a disturbed and unhealthy sleep.'

Deeks heard this in absolute silence, and only when he was sure that she'd finished did he try to open his mouth. 'Oh.'

'She needed someone. Specifically, someone like _you_.'

Deeks looked around, almost to make sure that it _was_ him that she was talking to. 'Me?' he asked, pointing to his chest.

'You know what you were saying about her doing to opposite of what you did? That was exactly true as to what happened in her dating life. She dated men who were almost severely serious. Very handsome, very nice men, but they didn't know how to have fun. They were very much like her. Too much like her. Too much for it to mean anything.' Hetty let out a small sigh and looked down at her hands. 'I believe that's why her relationship with Jack didn't work out as well as anyone had hoped.'

Deeks stared at her. 'Because he was too much like her?'

'He didn't start out that way. No. I read reports on Kensi's Jack almost immediately after she applied to become an NCIS agent. Before Fallujah, Jack was reported to be very much like you, Mr Deeks.'

Deeks gaped at her. 'Me?'

'To be sure, he didn't look like you in the least, dark, clean-shaven, well-presented.'

Deeks opened his mouth to object, but Hetty stopped him with a look.

'But his personality… He was the clown in his unit. Always making jokes, playing games, hiding behind this mask of joviality, forever trying to lighten the mood. Sound familiar?'

Deeks slowly nodded. 'And after Fallujah?'

Hetty smiled. 'I think that… if Jack had never gone to Fallujah, he and Kensi would be very happily married right about now. But fate stepped in.'

Deeks snorted.

'What?' Hetty asked.

'I'm sorry, it's just that that sounds very much like a discussion that Kensi and I had earlier, in the car.'

Hetty smiled. 'I wouldn't be surprised if it was.'

Deeks sighed. 'But what do I _do_, Hetty?'

'You'll realise it when the time is right, Mr Deeks.'

Deeks sighed. 'It seems that with us, the time is never right.'

'There is always a right time for everything, Marty.'

'Sounds like the right time for me to interrupt.' Kensi's bright voice interrupted their conversation, and Hetty smiled at him before patting him on the knee and getting up.

'Will he make it, Hetty?' Kensi asked, a smile on her face

'I believe he will, with a little TLC,' Hetty replied. 'You really must learn to take better care of your partners, Miss Blye.'

Kensi grinned sheepishly. 'Sorry, Hetty.'

'It's not me you should be apologising to.' Hetty gathered up her things and walked away.

'I guess she's right. Sorry, Deeks.'

Deeks shrugged. 'It's cool. We're good, right?'

'Sure.'

'So… you wanna give me some of that TLC that Hetty prescribed?'

Kensi rolled her eyes. 'Oh, Deeks.'

…

**I think poor old Deeks is due some TLC, seeing as I've burnt him, sprained his ankle (See "The Ballad Of Mona Lisa", my previous story) and now bashed his head in. I think I'm starting to come around to Maxie Kay's view that Deeks **_**does **_**maim beautifully. And no-one can deny that he looks amazing wrapped in bandages in a hospital bed.**

**Tell me what you think in a review. **

**Also, I'm very sorry that this story is taking so long. When I started it, I was in Year 10 at school, and it was easy. However, now, I'm in Year 11, and it's **_**so**_** hard. I've got, like, zero time to write, and it's kinda killing me. So, ten million apologies.**

**Also, I've somehow become involved in a model UN debate at school, and my partner (who's red headed and has a leprechaun costume) somehow managed to get us Ireland as our assigned country. I know nothing about Ireland. So if there's anybody out there, reading this, that knows anything about Ireland (there has to be some Irish people reading this, right?) please PM me.**

**XD PurpleHipposRock**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

**I don't own NCIS: LA or P!ATD. Sadly.**

'_No, it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of …'_

'I can't believe that Deeks pulled the "wounded" card,' Callen grumbled, getting out of Sam's car.

'Well, to be fair, he _is_ wounded,' Sam said with a smile.

'Kensi threw a book at him!' Callen exclaimed.

'Head wound.'

'He's gone back to work after being in an explosion after Kensi smashed up the car, which twisted his ankle and burned him*,' Callen replied, frowning.

'Again, it's a head wound. It's Deeks. He needs what brain matter he has.'

Callen laughed. 'You've got a point there.' He looked up at the museum with a look of distaste. 'I hated going to the museum when I was a kid.'

'Most kids did. Mine still do.' Sam chuckled. 'They were scared of the dinosaurs.'

'Seriously? The dinosaurs are the best part for me, now,' Callen said as they entered the museum and immediately walked into a dinosaur.

'They do have a certain coolness about them,' Sam admitted with a smile. 'Brachiosaurus. Huh. I would've thought that it was a t-rex.'

'Actually, the tyrannosaurus rex was renowned for the fact that it had extremely disproportionate arms,' a pleasant looking, fair-haired woman dressed in a dark blue blazer and black dress pants informed them. 'Hi. I'm Merry.'

Callen was instantly enchanted by this sweet-looking young woman with an infectious smile. 'Hi. Special Agent G Callen, Special Agent Sam Hanna, NCIS.'

Merry looked blank for a moment before brightening. 'NCIS. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, right?'

'That's the one,' Sam said, nodding.

'I'm good at retaining information,' Merry said with a small smile.

'Good thing for someone who works at a museum,' Callen noted.

'Yeah. I don't suppose you're here for the old Navy exhibit?' Merry asked with a grin.

'No, actually, we're here to talk to someone about Staff Sergeant Charlie Gould,' Sam informed her. 'We were informed that he volunteered here.'

'You were informed correctly. Has something happened to Charlie?' Merry asked, green eyes wide.

'Were you close with the Staff Sergeant?' Callen asked, leading her over to a conveniently placed bench.

'Yeah. We've worked together on a number of occasions… has something happened to Charlie?' Merry asked demandingly.

Callen sighed softly. 'I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Charlie was murdered earlier today.'

'Murdered?' Merry asked, her face clearly showing her shock. 'Charlie? But he was such a good man. Why would anyone want to murder him?'

'We're trying to find that out. What did Charlie do here?' Sam asked.

'Um…' Merry got up and led the way into another room. 'Here… he preserved all of these specimens for the museum.' They looked into cabinet after cabinet of animals.

'Did Charlie upset anyone around here?' Callen asked.

Merry shook her head before pausing. 'Well…'

'Anything you can tell us would be great, Merry,' Sam said, not ungently but definitely urgently.

'There have been a few eco-freaks coming around and protesting, saying that we've been killing these animals and upsetting the food-chain by not letting the ones that have died naturally go back into the environment.' Merry shook her head and laughed scornfully. 'They don't know anything.'

'Did the Staff Sergeant have anything to do with these people?' Callen asked.

'The last time they were seen here, they were protesting these and I got trapped in a crowd of them and they were yelling at me and… Charlie came in and found them here and just pulled me out and yelled at them to get out. Yelled a few other things at them after making sure that there weren't any small ears in hearing distance. They left, but only after one of the guys said something that sounded very threatening.'

'What was it?' Sam asked.

'"How would you feel if you were killed and filled with chemicals?"'

Callen let out a soft sigh. 'Okay, well, thank you, Merry, for that.' He stuck his hand in his pocket and came out with a card. 'My number, if you remember anything else.'

Merry nodded and gave him a shaky smile. 'It's hard to believe that Charlie's gone.'

Callen patted her once on the arm, and the two men left.

'There was a spark,' Sam said as they walked through the museum.

Callen groaned. 'Are you trying to set me up?'

'G, one day you are going to wake up alone with nothing to your name except an empty house.'

'Sam, I think that good things are worth waiting for. Maybe one day, it'll just drop out of the sky.'

Suddenly, there was a scream, and both men looked around, hands on their weapons.

There was a loud crash as a large Egyptian sculpture fell from the crane lifting it into the second floor of the museum.

'Sheesh, that was close,' Sam sighed, looking back at his partner. Only to find himself face to face with a large stone statue with a head of a dog. 'G?'

There was a soft groan from the floor, and Sam looked down to find the battered body of his partner. 'Oh my God, G! Someone call an ambulance!'

…

'Where is he?' Kensi asked, rushing up to Sam.

'CAT scan,' Sam sighed as she sat down next to him. 'The damn thing caught his head before smashing his arm.'

'But what happened?' Deeks asked, sitting down next to Sam on uncomfortable, plastic moulded seats.

'Freak accident,' Sam said, waving a hand vaguely. 'We were just walking along, and suddenly someone screams and next thing I know, a statue of a giant human-dog thing has KO'd G.'

'How is he?' Kensi asked.

'The statue smashed up his left arm in several places and the paramedics were sure that he had a concussion.'

'Was he conscious?'

'Briefly.'

'Did he say anything?'

'Just my name, and then he conked out again.'

'He'll be okay, though. I mean, this is G Callen.' Deeks looked very sure.

'It's true,' Kensi added, sitting on Sam's other side. 'I mean, he's survived a drive-by, he can survive this.'

Sam shook his head and sighed. 'It had to be G to be the one to have a freak accident,' he said. 'I mean, the first time I met him he'd just got out of hospital and had his ankle in plaster and his ribs wrapped. The guy is a walking accident waiting to happen.'

Kensi briefly placed a sympathetic hand on Sam's arm. 'This is Callen we're talking about. He can survive anything.'

Sam shook his head and let out a low grunt. 'One day, it'll be too much.'

Suddenly, a door opened and a doctor in dark green scrubs and a white lab coat approached them. 'Mr Callen?' he asked hesitantly.

'That's us,' Sam said, nodding his head. They all knew that he didn't get up because he didn't trust his legs.

The doctor nodded slightly. 'He's going to be okay. He's conscious and talking, and the CAT scan showed no signs of haemorrhaging in the brain. He's going to be very sore, and have a hell of a headache, and his arm will need several months in a cast before several more months of physical therapy, but I expect him to make a full recovery. If you'll come with me, I can give you a few minutes with him.'

Deeks could see that Sam wasn't capable of answering, and the tears glistening in Kensi's eyes told him all that he needed to know on her state of mind, so he quickly said, 'Thank you, we'd like that.'

The doctor nodded, and lead three-quarters of the team into a small private room where Callen reclined, one arm full encased in plaster, his head wrapped in bandages.

'Hey, guys,' Callen said, moving carefully so as not to further aggravate his injuries.

'Callen? Is that you playing the part of The Mummy?' Deeks joked. 'Because if you are, I bags Brendan Fraser's character! And Kensi will make the perfect Evie.'

'Very funny, Deeks,' Callen said, cracking a wry smile. 'Are you saying that because of my fetching attire, or because of the fact that I got whacked in the head by an Egyptian relic?'

'No-one told us that it was an _Egyptian_ statue,' Deeks said. 'Therefore, it must've been your fetching attire. I swear I've never seen you more attractive.'

Callen managed a low laugh. 'Well, are you lot going to sign my cast or not?' he asked, nodding to the black Sharpie that had been procured from somewhere.

'Bags me go first!' Deeks grinned, picking it up and scrawling something on the plaster of Paris.

'I didn't know that you were into… bondage?' Kensi read slowly as Deeks wrote it. 'Oh, Deeks.'

'Would you have preferred that I write "Wrong type of plastered"?' Deeks asked, passing the marker to her.

'Oh, Deeks,' Kensi groaned again before writing something on Callen's cast. 'You know, Callen, if you keep getting injured, we're just gonna start reserving this bed for you. This is really not healthy, the way you keep ending up in here. The nurses have to be sick of you by now.'

'Are _you_ scolding _me_, Kensi?' Callen asked curiously. 'Your team leader?'

'Yes, I am!' Kensi said sternly. 'You get hurt much too much, Callen.'

Callen reached out with his good hand and patted her on the arm. 'Don't worry, Kens. You'll be stuck with me for a good long while yet.'

The doctor cleared his throat. 'Excuse me, but I have to ask you all to leave for a couple of moments. We have to see to a few things, but you can come back in afterwards.'

The two agents and the detective turned to leave, but Callen said, 'Deeks. A moment?'

Deeks turned and nodded at the other two, who left.

'Can you give us a moment, Doc?'

The doctor looked Callen over before nodding and leaving as well.

'What's up, Callen?' Deeks asked.

Callen sighed. 'Kensi's shaken. You can't see it, but it's there.'

Deeks frowned. 'Then what do I do?'

'I don't know, but I'll tell you what I do know. Kensi thinks that everyone leaves. Her father died. Her previous partner died. Her other partners have left. Her fiancé left her.'

'What are you trying to tell me, Callen?' Deeks asked.

'She thinks that anyone she cares about leaves her. She's thinking, right now, that me getting hurt and ending up here is the universe's way of trying to get rid of me.'

Deeks thought for a moment before nodding. 'Okay.' He turned to leave, but Callen called him back.

'What are you going to do, Deeks?' He didn't liked the glint he saw in the younger man's eye.

Deeks smiled softly at him. 'Something I should've done awhile ago.'

And with that, he left.

…

**Cue cliff-hanger music…**

**And what is Deeks going to do? What do you think Deeks is going to do? And what do you think Deeks **_**should**_** do?**

**To be or not to be, that is the question…**

**Sorry, I've been studying a lot of Shakespeare lately. Actually, story is vaguely based on a Shakespeare play. Well, the murder plot is, anyway. Hey, they're forcing me to learn it, so I may as well use it!**

**I'm going to ask my dear readers, if there are any out there, to review for two reasons;**

**No-one did last time, which made me a little sad…**

**It's my seventeenth birthday! So, please? :)**

**XD PurpleHipposRock**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

**I don't own either Panic! At The Disco or NCIS: LA (except in my dreams, and they never come true…)**

'_Well, in fact, well I'll look at it this way, I mean technically our marriage is saved…'_

'I assume that you're gonna stay with your partner,' Deeks said to Sam, carefully closing Callen's door behind him.

Sam nodded. 'Yeah.'

'Okay, well… Kens, maybe you should go and check in with Hetty, tell her what the damage is,' Deeks said slowly to his partner.

'This is Hetty we're talking about. She probably already knows,' Kensi immediately replied. 'But I guess she would appreciate a report on Callen's condition.'

'Hang on,' Sam said. 'What are you going to do while we stay with our partners and report to Hetty?'

'I have a, uh, thing to do, with LAPD. Sort of a… errand.'

'You have an LAPD errand?' Kensi asked sceptically.

'Uh huh. Hey, I _am_ an LAPD detective.' And with that, Deeks walked away from them, adding beneath his breath, 'At least, for now, anyway.'

'What the heck was that about?' Sam asked.

Kensi shrugged. 'It's Deeks. That's explanation enough.'

Sam thought about that for a moment as he watched Kensi walk away, and he had to admit; she was definitely right.

…

Three hours later, Deeks paraded back into the bullpen with a grin on his face.

'Where have you been?' Kensi immediately snapped at him.

'LAPD.' He looked at her as if the answer was obvious.

'For three hours?'

'I _do_ work there, you know,' he said.

'Yeah, but you _hate_ it there.'

'So?'

'You generally _avoid_ going there, and when you do, it's for very, very short periods of time. You left at three; it's now six.'

'Knock-off time. Very good timing on my side, don't you think?' Deeks asked.

'Deeks, what are you up to?' Kensi asked suspiciously.

'Am I up to something?'

'_Yes_,' Kensi insisted. 'You are most definitely up to something, and I'm not going to feel safe until you tell me what it is.'

'I haven't done anything that will directly affect you.'

'You better not have!' Kensi said.

Suddenly, Hetty appeared in their midst. 'Mr Deeks.'

Both the agent and the detective jumped.

'Gees, Hetty, you almost gave me a heart attack,' Deeks gasped out, clutching at his chest. 'Would you mind not doing that?'

'As a highly trained LAPD detective, you should've known that I was there,' Hetty pointed out. 'And on that note, can I have a word with you?'

Deeks immediately grinned at her. 'Sure.'

'Wha- you mean that Hetty knows what you're up to?' Kensi called after them.

'Of course she does,' Deeks said, as if it were obvious, before following after Hetty like he was a lamb and she were his shepherd.

Kensi watched as Hetty took a seat at her desk and motioned for Deeks to do the same. She noticed that he was very edgy, fiddling with the hem of his blue and grey plaid shirt, and one leg was jiggling up and down, as it sometimes did on stakeouts, when he knew that something was going to happen but wasn't quite sure _when_.

She watched them carefully, as they began to talk. Deeks began, but as he had his back to her, she couldn't read his lips. However, when Hetty spoke, Kensi could almost _hear_ what she had to say.

'_He didn't sound very happy when he called, Mr Deeks,'_ Hetty said, before noticing that her junior agent was using the skills that Hetty herself had taught her to eavesdrop (kind of) and picked up her teacup, using it to mask her lips as she finished her part in the conversation.

Kensi sighed. Hetty was very, very good. She put her head down on her desk, the pile of paperwork sitting there making a fairly decent pillow and closed her eyes for a moment. It had been a very, very long day, and all she really wanted now was some sleep…

…

'Kens?' It was no use. His partner was completely out of it. She must've fallen asleep while waiting for him to finish his meeting with Hetty.

The pile of paperwork that she had her head rested on wasn't looking very comfortable, and he knew that she'd be more comfortable at home.

He knelt down by her side and gently rubbed her shoulder, squeezing and kneading until she showed signs of stirring.

'Come on, Kens, time to wake up.'

She slowly opened her eyes, and blinked sleepily at him. 'No it's not,' she slurred drowsily. 'Not time to wake up. Time to go back to sleep.'

'No it's not,' he mimicked her. 'You're at work. It's time for your partner to drive you home so that you can go to sleep in your bed because it's been a very long day.'

'No kidding,' she sighed, lifting her head. A piece of paperwork came with it, sticking to her cheek.

Deeks chuckled softly and peeled it off. 'Come on.'

She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. 'Ugh. Are you going to tell me what you're up to, yet?'

'Not yet, Kens. It's a surprise. For tomorrow.'

'I don't like surprises.'

'I know. But you'll like this one.'

'Are you completely sure about that, Deeks?'

'Absolutely not.'

'Wow, Deeks.' She looked at him with a smile on her face. 'You really do know me.'

'Of course I do. That's why I don't give definitive answers anymore.'

She laughed. 'Smart boy.'

'You see? You're rubbing off on me.'

'I'm glad to not be able to say the same.'

'Oh, Kens, are you sure?' he asked. 'Would you have ever been able to come up with a response like that before you knew me?'

'Nope. Because I didn't need to. You know, seeing as all my other partners were so much more professional than you.'

'Aw, Fern, you love it.'

'You keep telling yourself that, Deeks. One day, you might even believe it.'

'Thanks, Fern, honey. I always knew that you cared.'

Hetty watched them leave the building with a smile on her face. Everything always worked out in the end if you gave them a little nudge. And she was the marionette master, holding all the strings.

…

'Callen.' Kensi stopped in the entrance of the bullpen in surprise, and Deeks, who was busying playing Angry Birds Seasons on his phone, ran into her with a surprised cry.

'Hey! I almost had that one,' he said.

'Which one was it?' Callen asked, shaking out his newspaper with the practice of someone who has had to read his newspaper with one hand quite often.

'Valentine's Day. I've been trying to get this first level all last night and I just can't,' Deeks grumbled.

'There's a comment to be made there about you and your relationships, but I just can't think of it,' Kensi said, grinning at her partner.

'Thanks, Kens,' he said dryly.

'How are you?' Kensi directed the question to their team leader.

'Itches,' he said laconically, motioning to his arm. 'Headache,' motioning to his head, which was now only covered with a Band-Aid.

'How come you got out of the hospital so quickly?' Deeks asked. 'I mean, you got in yesterday evening, and today you're out and already at work.'

'Well, I wouldn't say that I was technically _cleared_ to go back to work…' Callen said slowly.

'Nor did he officially check out,' Sam grumbled as he came in, placing a cardboard mug of coffee on his partner's desk. 'Called me from the hospital, said he was leaving in ten minutes whether they wanted him to or not and if I was outside waiting to give him a ride it'd be real helpful.'

'Really?' Deeks asked.

'After the first three times, Hetty gave up trying to stop me.'

'Doesn't mean I'm happy about it, Mr Callen.' Hetty stalked into the bullpen, looking very unimpressed.

'She's ubiquitous,' Deeks whispered to Kensi.

'Learnt a new word, did we?' Kensi asked.

'My sister called me last night. Tried to tell me how her fiancé made her feel. Let me tell you, I was Googling for the majority of that phone call, and I bet she was too.'

'But I'm not here to nag you, Mr Callen,' Hetty said to her team lead. 'In fact, I'm here with very good news.'

Deeks looked at her, surprise written all over his face. 'That fast?'

'That fast,' she said with a smile. 'Apparently, Leon had been waiting for that particular call for months now.'

'Is this the surprise?' Kensi asked Deeks.

'I sure hope it is, and we're not talking about something else completely,' Deeks said, looking at Hetty for reassurance.

'This is it,' Hetty assured him.

'What the heck is going on?' Callen asked.

'I'd sure like to know,' Sam replied.

Hetty gave them all a smile before taking a shiny new black SIG Sauer and an embossed, black leather wallet with a shiny gold 'NCIS' emblem embedded in the front. 'Welcome to NCIS, Special Agent Deeks.'

Kensi, Sam and Callen stared in shock as Deeks dutifully shook Hetty's hand and received his new badge and gun before shaking off the solemness of the event and doing a little dance.

'You're an agent?' Callen asked, wide eyed.

'You had to approve it, didn't you?' Deeks asked, confused. 'The form did have your signature on it. I thought you knew.'

'No. I never signed anything,' Callen said, looking suspiciously at Hetty.

'Relax, Mr Callen. I never forged anything. You did sign it.'

'I don't recall signing it.'

'Mr Callen, you sign dozens of forms every day. How do you know that you didn't just sign it without reading it, as you so often do when it's the end of the day and you just want to go home? I could've just slipped it into your 'in' pile when you weren't looking…'

'How long have you been waiting for those papers to go through?' Sam asked, looking pointedly at the foot-high stack of papers on his partner's desk.

'I put them in last night,' Deeks said.

'_That's_ why you took so long at LAPD yesterday,' Kensi said, her face lighting up with the "a-ha!" moment.

'Exactly. I had to go through the whole cleaning out my desk, and listening to Lieutenant Bates give me the standard speech about how much the department would miss me, and we then had a discussion on how that speech was a load of crap-'

'And this took you _three_ hours?' Kensi asked.

'I had a lot in my desk. I was there for a long time,' Deeks said, as if it were obvious.

'And thus the boxes of stuff down here,' Sam said, sitting down at his desk after tripping over said boxes, which were somewhat carefully stored beneath Deeks' desk.

'Again, a _lot_ in my desk.'

'So, _Special_ _Agent_ Deeks,' Kensi said with a soft smile.

'That sounds so cool,' Deeks replied with a goofy grin.

'Don't let it get to your head,' Sam warned him.

'But doesn't it sound cool?' Deeks asked.

Callen thought about it for a moment. 'Actually, _Detective_ Deeks sounds better, in my opinion.'

'Why?' Deeks asked.

'Alliteration,' Kensi said immediately.

Callen looked at her blankly. 'Huh?'

'Did you not pay attention in high school English?' Deeks asked.

'It's been awhile since those days,' Callen said.

'Obviously,' Kensi said.

Suddenly, Eric appeared on the balcony. 'Hey, guys! Rose just called. She's finished the autopsy.'

Nell joined him. 'And congrats, Deeks.'

'Oh, yeah,' Eric said. 'That too.'

'Special Agent Densi, go talk to Rose,' Callen said to the junior partnership.

'That sounds so cool,' Sam said to his partner.

'I know, right?' Callen asked.

'C'mon, partner,' Deeks said, seeing that his partner was about to say something rude and unkind. 'We got us an ME to see.'

…

**Woo! Deeks is finally an NCIS agent. **

**Reviews are love!**

**Sorry about the long wait for this chapter (I plead guilty to being swamped under homework... I'm serious – the amount we get is ridiculous.) Anyhoo, I've got a practical bio test next week, so I figured I'd better post now.**

**XD PurpleHipposRock**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

**Well, my birthday came and went and nothing came in the mail that said I owned NCIS:LA or P!ATD…**

'_Well, this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne…'_

'Good morning, Agent, Detective,' Rose said as the two entered the ME's office.

'Actually, he's not a detective anymore, Rose,' Kensi informed her.

Rose looked up at them. 'Then what is he?'

'Why are we talking about me like I'm not even here?' Deeks questioned. 'I'm now Special Agent Marty Deeks,' he announced with a large grin.

'I've been trying to figure out what the "special" bit is, but I just can't,' Kensi told Rose, who grinned widely.

'Well, maybe he'll show us here. I have a cause of death; would you care to demonstrate your special agent skills by guessing?' she asked.

'Well, you said poisoning earlier,' Deeks said. 'So I'm guessing that you have a specific poison?'

'I do.'

'What is it?' Kensi asked.

Rose motioned to the dead Staff Sergeant. 'His mouth smells like bitter almonds.'

'Bitter almonds?' Deeks asked before bending over and carefully sniffing in the vicinity of the man's mouth. Immediately, Rose and Kensi took the chance to check out his very well formed backside. 'Hey!'

Rose and Kensi were very suddenly looking elsewhere.

'It does smell like bitter almonds,' he continued, completely oblivious to the fact that the two women were checking him out.

'Cyanide poisoning?' Kensi asked.

'Cyanide poisoning,' Rose confirmed.

'How did it get into him?' Deeks asked.

'Well, he wasn't a smoker, so I'm assuming that he didn't inhale it, so my other guess would be that he ingested it.'

'What did he eat, then?' Kensi asked.

'For dinner, he ate chicken and corn soup, lamb chops and mashed potatoes and chocolate pudding with copious amounts of champagne,' Rose said. 'And it appears that for breakfast, he had more champagne.'

'I don't blame him,' Deeks said. 'That was, after all, the last breakfast he'd have as a free man.'

The two women didn't comment, just glared at him. Kensi finally said, 'So, which killed him?'

'I believe that it was the breakfast champagne,' Rose said. 'Cyanide can take various amounts of time to kill, depending on the amount received. He got a fair amount.'

'How fast?' Kensi asked.

'I reckon it killed him in about… fifteen minutes?'

'And you called time of death at ten forty-seven,' Deeks recalled. 'Which means that he got the dose around ten thirty.'

'So we've got to find out where the Staff Sergeant got the champagne from,' Kensi said. 'Is there anything else that you've found out?'

Rose shook her head. 'I'm sorry. Have I been unhelpful?'

'No, Rose, you've been very helpful,' Deeks assured her.

'Well, congratulations on your career change, Special Agent Deeks,' Rose said.

'And thanks for your help,' Kensi said.

'No problem,' Rose said. 'See you another time.'

'Uh huh.'

Deeks followed Kensi out of the ME's office and into the sunshine. And that's when he heard it.

'Marty?'

Kensi looked at her partner as he froze and then looked around in wonder. 'Ellie?'

Suddenly, Deeks was hit broadside on by a quick-moving person who wrapped their arms around him. 'Marty!' it squealed.

Deeks pulled it away slightly so that he could see it, and a broad grin spread across his face as he took in the long, wavy blonde hair and bright blue eyes. 'Ellie! What are you doing here?'

'Well, I thought I'd surprise you! And I have a _huge_ surprise for you. But it seems that you have an even bigger surprise for _me_.' Ellie took a step away from him and folded her arms before looking at Kensi and then back at him. Before doing a double take. 'Um… Marty?'

Deeks looked from Ellie to Kensi and back to Ellie before shaking himself out of his daze. 'Sorry. Um, Kens, this is Ellie, my sister. Ellie, this is my partner, Special Agent Kensi Blye.'

'Pleasure to meet you,' Ellie said. 'I've heard a lot about you.'

'Wish I could say the same,' Kensi replied. She could hear a touch of an Australian accent in her voice. 'Your brother talks a lot, but never about anything important.'

'So he hasn't changed?' Ellie asked, poking her brother in the chest.

'As long as I've known him? No.'

Deeks coughed loudly. 'Um, can we stop talking about me like I'm not here?'

Ellie laughed. 'Sure.'

'Great. Hey, I didn't catch _why_ you're here earlier…' Deeks said slowly.

'That's because I didn't say,' Ellie said teasingly. 'It's the most amazing news, Marty. Robert just got a new job opportunity, and it's right here in LA! I'm coming home!' She was almost squealing in excitement.

Deeks' eyes widened almost comically. 'Oh, my God… You're coming home?' He swept her into another hug. 'I need you meet your fiancé and _hug_ him! He's bringing you home!' He suddenly let go of her. 'Where _is_ said fiancé?'

'Oh, he's checking in with his new boss,' Ellie said, carelessly waving one hand. 'Which left me to surprise my brother at the LAPD… where he apparently no longer works. You wanna explain that, big brother?'

'It's been an hour, tops, and you've already forgotten,' Kensi teased at the sight of her partner's perplexed face.

Deeks blinked at her, and then a smile broke out on her face. 'Oh, right. I'm not a cop anymore,' he informed her. He pulled out his badge and pressed it into her hands. 'I'm a Federal Agent.'

Ellie's eyes widened as she inspected the badge, before asking, 'What's NCIS?'

Kensi and Deeks exchanged a smile, before Kensi gestured with her hands. 'Go ahead. Your first time may as well be with your sister.'

He grinned at her, and looked exactly like a small child at Christmas. 'Naval Criminal Investigative Service.' He made an excited wriggle. 'Ooh, I'll never get sick of that.'

'You were never in the Navy,' Ellie said, frowning. 'Were you?'

'The brilliance of NCIS is that you don't have to be part of the Navy to be part of it. Like, I've always been _just_ an NCIS agent. I've never been part of the Navy or anything,' Kensi informed her.

'And there are heaps of ex-cops too, right?' Deeks asked.

'Yeah,' Kensi agreed.

Ellie smiled a small smile. 'You guys don't have to convince me of NCIS's brilliance. Anything that Marty wants is more than good enough for him.'

Deeks sent his partner a sideways look beneath his lashes. 'Uh huh…'

'Anyway, I was wondering if you'd be able to join me for lunch,' Ellie said brightly, giving her brother a hopeful smile. 'Both of you,' she added, sending Kensi the smile as well.

Deeks winced slightly. 'Lunch isn't a likely prospect,' he said slowly.

'Dinner, then. You can't work at night,' Ellie said immediately. 'I really want you to meet Rob.'

Deeks sighed and exchanged a look with Kensi. 'I… uh… Kens?'

Kensi smiled at him. 'Did you seriously ask _me_ for permission?'

'No,' Deeks replied slowly. 'I'm just seeing if we had to work tonight,' he continued.

Kensi shrugged. 'I have no clue. I remember once we started the day doing paperwork and ended up getting blown up.'

'Which day?' Deeks asked dryly.

Kensi grinned. 'I'm just saying, you can't really be sure of anything when setting a date with this job.'

'Well, how about we say seven and we won't grudge you if you turn up at ten?' Ellie proposed.

Deeks looked at Kensi and shrugged. 'Okay, then. But, um, we better get going, El. We've got federal agent stuff to do.'

'A murder to solve,' Kensi added.

'But we will see you tonight. Promise.' Deeks smiled at her.

'Don't give me your charm smile,' Ellie said. 'I taught that to _you_.'

'And here I was thinking that he'd learnt it from Monty,' Kensi said, shaking her head.

Ellie grinned at her before turning to her brother and giving him a hug. 'I'll text you the details, 'kay?'

''kay,' Deeks replied, squeezing her tightly back. 'I wanna meet this "Rob".'

'You,' Ellie said slowly, poking him in the chest, 'Be nice.'

'Oh, don't worry,' Kensi said, a glint in her eye. 'I'll make sure he plays nice.'

Deeks gulped. 'You can believe that.'

'How much should I believe it?' Ellie asked.

Densi exchanged a look before Deeks rolled up the sleeve of his plaid shirt. 'See that?' It was an approximately fist sized purpling bruise.

'How'd that happen?' Ellie asked.

'It was me, trying to get him to play nice,' Kensi said dryly.

'It works, most of the time,' Deeks said brightly. 'I'm starting to grow immune to the pain.'

'Maybe I should start whacking you elsewhere,' Kensi threatened.

Ellie laughed before shaking Kensi's hand. 'That's my job. At least, until you marry him.'

Deeks' eyes widened, and Kensi's jaw dropped as Ellie started to walk away.

'No!' Deeks called after her. 'We're not…' He sighed as she waved, out of earshot. 'Together,' he finished lamely.

Kensi laughed softly and patted her partner on the shoulder before waving the file that she was holding in front of his face. 'Come on. We've got to get this back to Callen and Sam.'

Deeks sighed. 'I wish that girl would _call_. Honestly, she never calls, no matter what country she's in.'

'Deeks, the way I see it, this day is getting better and better for you.'

Deeks grinned at his partner. 'You know what? You're right.'

'Aren't I always?'

…

**Deeks **_**is**_** having a good day, isn't he? Purple plot hippo must be feeling good today – I don't think this will last, though. When does it ever?**

**Review, please.**

**XD PurpleHipposRock**


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

**I don't own P!ATD or NCIS:LA… yet. Muhahaha…**

'_Well, in fact, well I'll look at it this way,_

_I mean, technically our marriage is saved…'_

Callen looked up from his laptop and over at his partner. 'Have you got anything yet?' he asked dully.

'No,' Sam replied, looking up and taking the opportunity to stretch. 'I've been looking at Staff Sergeant Gould's bank account statements. He's been hitting his credit card hard for the last month, but it's all been for wedding stuff. He must've given his fiancé a card as well, because there are charges for flower arrangements and dresses and makeup and shoes on here. But there's absolutely nothing unusual here.'

'Would you know what would be unusual in a when buying for a wedding?' Callen asked his partner curiously.

'You didn't see my credit card statements after I married my wife,' Sam said dryly. 'Trust me, I went over that thing with a fine tooth comb to make sure that every single thing was necessary. Apparently, it was.'

Callen chuckled softly. 'How's the little one?'

'Not so little anymore,' Sam admitted.

'And the wife?' Callen asked.

'She's doing alright,' Sam nodded slowly. 'Been asking about you. Wanted to know if you could come to dinner tonight, actually. Are you free?'

Callen thought about it for a moment. 'Yeah, I am.'

Sam grinned. 'I'll text her, then. What have you been working on?'

'Well, we never found the Staff Sergeant's car at the crime scene, or at his home,' Callen said, frowning at his laptop.

'You think it might have something to do with his murder?' Sam asked.

'It might have evidence in it,' Callen said. 'But I've had no luck looking for it.'

'Have you had Eric start a Kaleidoscope search?' Sam asked.

'Not yet,' Callen said.

'Well, what are you waiting for?' Sam asked.

'I was waiting to exhaust my own search techniques first,' Callen said. Suddenly, his laptop beeped, and he checked it. 'And that was my last one.'

'And how did it turn out?' Sam questioned.

'Badly.' Callen shut the laptop with a sigh. 'Nothing.'

'Time to go to the tech team,' Sam said with a smile.

Callen nodded. 'Time to go to the tech team. Eric!'

Eric appeared on the balcony. 'Yeah?'

'Do a Kaleidoscope search on the Staff Sergeant's car!' Callen called up to him.

'Way ahead of you there, Callen,' Eric replied, stretching out the "way" as he pulled something up on his iPad. 'I knew that you'd end up asking me, so I did it hours ago. I've got to teach you how to use Kaleidoscope. Address is on your phones.'

Sam pulled out his phone as it chirped. 'Huh. Eric, can you get Densi's current position?'

'Yeah.' Eric frowned slightly as he tapped something on his iPad. 'They're two blocks away from it.'

'Alright,' Callen said. 'I'll call Densi, tell them to check it out.'

'Cool.' Eric ducked back into the Ops Centre.

…

Deeks hung up the phone.

'That was Callen?' Kensi asked.

'Yeah. Apparently, Gould's car is three blocks from here,' Deeks said. 'He wants us to check it out.' He put an address into the GPS. 'Hey, Kens, we're going the wrong way.'

'On it,' she replied, and immediately swung the car around, narrowly missing a messenger on a bike.

Deeks winced at the sound of horns blaring as she did the u-turn. 'Did you even check your rear-view mirror then?'

'Yes,' Kensi insisted.

She pulled up behind a small red convertible.

'Wow,' Deeks said. 'I should join his business. What's he a partner in, anyway?'

'Um, I think he's a partner in a musical instrument shop chain,' Kensi said, getting out of the car.

'Well, I guess that makes sense,' he replied. 'I know that just the accessories for a violin cost a lot, let alone the instrument.'

'Do we have the keys for the car?' Kensi asked.

Deeks shook his head. 'No keys were found with him, or in his apartment.'

'Terrific,' she groaned. 'I hate picking the lock on newer cars. The alarms always go off, and it takes forever to turn them off.'

Deeks ran a hand under the back right wheel arch and grinned at her over the car's boot. 'Guess I what found that won't make that necessary?'

She sighed. 'The keys.'

He grinned brightly. 'The keys.' He lifted a hand and pressed a button, and the car unlocked with a bright beeping sound.

Kensi rolled her eyes and yanked open the drivers' side door. 'Wow. It is disgusting in here.'

Deeks got into the passenger seat and pulled on his black latex gloves. 'I'm afraid to open the glove box for fear of what might jump out at me.'

'That's why I took this side,' she said, grinning at him before nudging some of the fast food wrappers out of the foot-well. 'This guy did not have a balanced diet.'

He took hold of the glove box handle and yanked it open. Something flew out at him, and he jumped, letting out a yell and swatting at it. 'Eugh!'

Kensi shuddered. 'What was that?'

'A roach,' Deeks shivered, twitchily looking everywhere for the insect. 'I think it's gone.' He frowned, spotting something on the dashboard beneath all of the trash. 'Is that a camera?'

Kensi frowned. 'Yeah. It is.'

Deeks picked it up and tried to click it on. 'It's out of battery.'

Kensi shrugged. 'We'll get Eric to get the footage when we get back to the Ops Centre. Hey, I found the Staff Sergeant's phone. I'll check his last calls.'

'Yup,' Deeks said, gingerly reaching into the glove box and closing his hand around what felt like a garage door remote. 'What's this?' he pulled it out, only to find a small black box about the size of a cassette tape adorned with a single red button which was lit up by a small red LED. And then they heard the beeps.

Deeks exchanged a look with his partner before saying 'Really?' and exiting the car with great haste. Kensi followed suit, but neither were quick enough to escape all injury as the red convertible blew up.

He was on his feet and on the other side of the car before Kensi could lift herself to her hands and knees. 'Hey, take it easy, Kens,' he said gently, kneeling beside her. 'Any serious injuries?'

She raked a loose lock of hair out of her eyes and looked at him through a stream of blood. 'I don't think I'm dying, so no.'

'Well, that's okay then.' He took her hand and pulled her up before reaching up and brushing her hair away from her face. 'You've got a scratch above your left eye.' He wiped away blood with the pad of his thumb.

She reached up and loosely grasped his forearm. He winced anyway.

'You've scraped your arms,' she said gently, running a gentle finger over the scrape.

'You've got scratches all over your palms.' He took hold of her hand and examined the damage.

'I'll live,' she said dismissively. 'The car, however…'

Deeks looked from the ex-car to the remote. 'Really? How clichéd is this?' he asked, holding up the remote. 'Remote with a big red button?'

'Obviously not clichéd enough for it to work,' she replied, wiping away blood that was trickling down the side of her face. 'You know we're going out to dinner tonight?'

Deeks looked at her with a wince. 'It was a bomb. You're excused.'

Suddenly, Kensi's phone rang. 'It's Eric,' she informed him before answering, putting the phone on loudspeaker. 'Hey, Eric.'

'Oh, thank God, you guys are okay,' Eric said thankfully. 'I got reports of an explosion through LAPD and then I realised that it was where I'd just sent you, and I didn't know if you were okay because the explosion knocked out the security cameras and-'

'What he means, guys, is that he's very glad that you're okay,' Nell's calm voice interrupted. 'We're both glad.'

'Miss Blye, Mr Deeks, what happened?' Hetty's voice demanded.

'We were going through Staff Sergeant Gould's car and then I found a remote in his glove box and then we heard beeping and legged it,' Deeks informed her.

'Are you seriously injured?' Hetty asked. 'Should we send paramedics?'

Kensi and Deeks exchanged a look and as one shook their heads. 'No. We're okay,' Kensi said. 'A few scratches, but nothing that won't heal up with a Band-Aid.'

'Good,' Hetty said. 'Mr Callen and Mr Hanna are currently on their way to your location, so when they get there to secure the location, you can come back here so that I can check you out properly.'

'Okay, Hetty,' they said as one.

'Good.' And Hetty hung up.

'Sheesh,' Deeks sighed, wiping his palms on his jeans. 'Is it just me that feels exhausted after a conversation with her?' He looked down to find a large gaping hole where the left knee had been, and a fair amount of blood to accompany it. 'Damn it.'

'Looks like that might need a kiss better,' Kensi said with a wry smile.

'Are you offering?' he immediately asked.

'No,' she replied.

Deeks shook his head. 'You put a guy's hopes up, and then you pull them right down again.'

Kensi patted him on the shoulder. 'Maybe you'll convince Hetty to kiss it better.'

Deeks shuddered at the thought. 'No, thanks. Not that I'm not certain that Hetty would make an excellent maternal figure when it comes to applying bandages, but I was raised self-reliant – I can deal by myself.'

She paused before staring at him. '"Self-reliant"?' she asked incredulously. 'Deeks, your father _abused_ you!'

'Exactly. I got good at fixing up my own injuries. And my sister's, so I can help you if you like.'

She stared at him for a moment before moving forward and hugging him tightly. He let out a surprised whimper before gently returning the hug.

'What's this for?' he asked, burying his face in her hair.

'I'm just sorry that you had such a crappy childhood,' she mumbled into his chest.

He chuckled, and she could hear and feel the rumble through his chest. 'Your father was _murdered_.'

'At least he didn't try to kill me.'

Suddenly, there was a horn honking, and they drew away to see Callen and Sam in Callen's blue Mercedes Benz parked behind Kensi's slightly killed silver SRX.

Kensi sighed and patted the hood of the car as she passed it. 'This was a good car.'

'Was. Is no more,' Deeks said glumly, following her to lean into Sam's open window.

'What the hell happened?' Callen asked, motioning to the two dead cars in front of them.

'Bomb,' Kensi said laconically.

'Here.' Deeks reached into Sam's window and dropped the remote into his lap. 'That set it off.'

'Why the hell did you press the button?' Callen asked.

'I didn't mean to,' Deeks defended himself. 'I was looking in the dude's glove box. There were roaches in there, okay? I was flying blind. The thing was crammed with trash.'

'Probably to hide the remote,' Sam said. 'I guess you guys need a ride, huh?'

'It'd be nice,' Kensi said. 'You know, if you're feeling generous.'

Callen nodded to the back seat. 'Get in.'

'You guys look like hell,' Sam said conversationally.

'Gee, thanks,' Kensi said blandly, wiping blood from her forehead and grimacing before wiping it on her jeans.

'Hey, I liked those jeans,' Deeks said, frowning at her.

Kensi looked down at herself. 'Really? I've got like, twenty pairs of jeans. How can you tell the difference?'

'Those were an eight,' Deeks said immediately. 'You've only got three eights.'

'And how many tens do I have?' she asked, raising her eyebrows.

'Eleven,' he said immediately.

'Why are these only an eight?' she asked.

Deeks wrinkled his nose. 'They're too… tight.'

'I thought you said you liked those,' Sam said from the front passenger seat.

'They're tight,' Deeks said as if it explained it all.

'So, their downfall is also their upside?' Callen asked.

'Uh huh.'

'Deeks, I don't know how your mind works,' Callen said.

'I've been trying for two years now and I don't,' Kensi admitted.

Sam chuckled. 'One case with him was enough for me. Are you two okay? No huge injuries?'

'No,' Deeks said.

'Nothing that can't be fixed with a Band-Aid,' Kensi added, wiping more blood away from her face.

'You sure that doesn't need stitches?' Sam asked, watching her in the rear-view mirror.

'It only looks bad,' Kensi assured him.

'Head wounds always bleed more,' Deeks informed them.

'Now who's Wikipedia?' Kensi asked him.

'Oh, trust me, you'll always be Wikipedia.'

'Thanks,' Kensi said blandly. 'I'd rather not.'

'Because you'd rather be Fern?' he asked curiously. 'Or Sugar-Bear? You liked Sugar-Bear, I know that.'

She groaned. 'I take it back. Callen, take us to the hospital, because Deeks will need it.'

He chuckled. 'Too late, Kens, we're already here. You're just going to have to deal with Hetty.'

She sighed. 'You mean that you're just going to have to rely on Hetty to save you?' she asked.

'Yeah. That.' And he got out of the car before she could punch him.

…

**The hug; whenever Deeks talks about his childhood, I just want to hug him. And so, when I have control of the characters, I can give him a hug. Sure, it's not **_**me**_** that giving him the hug (because that would just be weird), but at least I can get Kensi to give him the hug. **

**Anyhoo, review if you liked it! And definitely review if you want me to update!**

**XD PurpleHipposRock**


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